When new agent installers are added to the Carbon Black App Control server, the flag that triggers the automatic agent upgrade process is set to Disabled. Follow these steps to enable automatic upgrade of agents on connected endpoints.

  • For each policy that contains agents you do not want to upgrade now, make sure the Allow upgrades checkbox in the Options section of the Add Policy or Edit Policy page is not checked.
  • For each policy that has agents you do want to upgrade, check the Allow upgrades box in the Options section of the Add Policy or Edit Policy page. Avoid doing this for a large number of agents simultaneously (see the following Important note).
  • On the System Configuration/Advanced Options tab, check Automatic Agent Upgrades.
Important:
  • Before you re-enable system-wide agent upgrades, be sure you disable upgrades for policies that you do not want upgraded immediately.
  • Simultaneous upgrade of a large number of agents can impact system performance. Contact VMware Carbon Black Support for best practices regarding bulk agent upgrades.
  • When a Carbon Black App Control server is upgraded, ongoing enhancements to interesting file identification make it necessary to rescan the fixed drives on all agent-managed endpoints. These upgrades also require a new inventory of files in any trusted directories to determine whether there are previously ignored files that are now considered interesting. This process can cause considerable input/output activity, which can require between minutes and many hours, depending upon the number of agents and the number of files.

    For upgrades managed by the Carbon Black App Control server and those using third-party distribution methods, VMware Carbon Black recommends a gradual upgrade of agents to avoid an unacceptable impact on network and server performance.