Symantec Developer Group

Can a windows server with the SMP 7.1 agent installed on it be cloned? (VMWare)

I have read through the following article http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/smp-agent-can-and-should-be-cloned-thomas-baird but it covered including the agent within an image/template. I would like to be able to stand up a server, install the SMP agent on it then clone the server to a different hostname.

I know that the 6.x agent didn't do so well with cloning...has that changed with 7.1?

If cloning cannot be done what is the proper uninstall procedure?

Thank you!

For 7.1 you should run "aexnsagent.exe /resetguid" after cloning to force agent to request a new ID from the server. Theoretically if your cloning mechanism creates a clone with a different MAC address then you should be fine. This information is used to create a unique machine idenitification info - the resource keys.

In 7.5 the new ID will be requested automatically if resource keys change.

I think VMWare creates clones with different MAC addresses, so /resetguid should be enough.

Sergei,

Thank you for your response! I'll implement this right away, we are also upgrading to 7.5 in the next 3 months. Good to know that cloning works, we were gunshy with our experience from 6.x