Quick reference for migrating to McAfee Agent 5.5.1 and later

This article is a reference for all resources needed by a McAfee customer to plan the upgrades from previous versions of MA to MA 5.5.1. Most of the following information is available in the product installation guides and Readme.txt files, but some of the information is available only in Product Management Statements published in the Knowledge Center.

NOTE: This information does not include details related to future releases.

Resources:

For the list of products that MA 5.5.1 supports, see KB90494.
To view the new features introduced in MA 5.5.1, see the MA 5.5.1 Release Notes.

The following information details the different aspects of MA 5.5.1 resources, which are helpful for planning the migrations or upgrades from previous versions.

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Feature differences between legacy McAfee Agent 4.x.x and McAfee Agent 5.x.x

The table below outlines the features that are available in different versions of MA (4.x versus 5.x)

McAfee Agent Features	MA 4.x	MA 5.x
Agent-server communication via Proxy	No	Yes
Configure Automatic Update post deployment	No	Yes
Custom Properties ¹	Yes	Yes
Manifest Based Policy	No	Yes
McAfee Agent Smart Installer	Yes	Yes
McAfee Agent Support in Cloud	No	Yes
McTray – Automatic launch in remote desktop session	Yes ⁵	Yes
Native 64-bit support	No	Yes
Peer to Peer	No	Yes
Relay ²	Yes	Yes
Remote provisioning	Yes ⁴	Yes
Run Client Task Now	Yes ³	Yes
Self-Protection	No	Yes
SuperAgent	Yes ³	Yes
Smart Scheduler	No	Yes
Third-party software authentication	No	Yes

¹	MA 5.0.5 and later supports four other custom properties. For details, see the McAfee Agent 5.0.5 Product Guide (PD26907).
²	MA 5.5.x supports predetermined RelayServer for clients to communicate with.
³	Supported only on Windows operating systems.
⁴	Supported only on non-Windows operating systems.
⁵	Supported on Windows workstation operating systems.

Supported upgrades to MA 5.5.1

	Operating Systems
MA Versions	Windows	Linux	macOS	AIX	HP-UX	Solaris
4.6.x to 5.5.1	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
4.8.x to 5.5.1	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
5.0.x to 5.5.1	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
5.5.x to 5.5.1	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No

For a list of operating systems that MA supports, see KB51573.

For methods of upgrading MA to 5.5.1 from previous versions, see the McAfee Agent 5.5.1 Installation Guide.

Troubleshoot MA upgrade or remove failures

When you upgrade and restore agents, if any failures are encountered because of environment or self-protection, we recommend using the following new MA removal option to remove MA from the client system:

FramePkg.exe /Ripper

NOTE: This command-line option must be run with administrator rights.

The removal option can be used on any version of MA, such 4.6.x or 4.8.x or 5.x.x (Windows only).

This removal functionality is to remove McAfee Agent only.

This feature is a failover mechanism in case you encounter failures in regular removal of agents.

IMPORTANT: The removal option is not recommended to be used if Drive Encryption is present in the system.

For other options for removing MA, see the McAfee Agent 5.5.1 Installation Guide.

After MA is uninstalled using any of the uninstall methods, reinstall MA.

Use the new MA removal capability within MA installer

Check in the McAfee Agent package to McAfee ePO repository:
1. Select Menu, Software, Master Repository.
2. Click Check in Package, browse to the agent packages list, select the required package, and then click Next.
3. Ensure Current is selected under Branch, and then click Save.
Create an installation package:
1. Select, Menu, Systems, System Tree, New Systems.
2. Select Create and download agent installation package.
3. Select the appropriate Agent version.
4. Deselect Embed Credentials in Package to receive the default package. Otherwise, specify the required credentials.
5. If you want the deployment to use a specific Agent Handler, select it from the drop-down list. If not, select All Agent Handlers.
6. Click OK.
7. Select FramePkg.exe and save it to the desktop.
8. Export it to FramePkg.exe to the client node.
To uninstall McAfee Agent, run FramePkg.exe /Ripper at the command prompt.

NOTE: The above command must be run with administrator rights only.

Knowledge Center

Quick reference for migrating to McAfee Agent 5.5.1 and later

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Quick reference for migrating to McAfee Agent 5.5.1 and later

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Related Information

Affected Products

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