Reinstalling Uninstalled Agents

Overview

In some cases Agent software may have already been uninstalled from a computer for various reasons, such as to release a license, or when a computer or operating system was rebuilt.  In such cases if you wish to restore the data that was previously secured to the same client, using a specific Agent, you can reinstall the Agent on the client. For example, Agents such as DataArchiver, Active Directory, Exchange iDataAgents, etc., can only perform in-place restores. You can consider reinstalling the Agent to restore the data secured by these Agents.

When you uninstall an Agent the corresponding icon appears dimmed in the CommCell Console. This is displayed in the sample image. Note that the Agent appears dimmed in the CommCell Browser, as it was not deleted.

Reinstalling the Agent will also automatically re-establish the configurations that were previously established, provided these configurations and the Agent were not deleted from the CommCell Browser before or after uninstalling the Agent.

You can follow the procedure to install an Agent as described in the procedures listed in Installation. However when you re-install the software you will be prompted to select either the previously assigned storage policies or a new storage policy for subclients. A sample image of this dialog box is displayed below.

Important Considerations

• If you uninstall or deconfigure a client and subsequently upgrade the CommServe Software, make sure to use the same version of the software when you re-install the client. In other words, the software version used to re-install the client must be the same software version as the CommServe.
• Note that if you wish to reinstall a component that has been deconfigured, you must first uninstall both the Agent and Base software from the computer. See Uninstalling Components for more information on uninstalling software components.
• If you have uninstalled the software on the client computer without notifying the CommServe or if a client crashes, and if you wish to reinstall the software by installing software from CommCell Console, you must first force uninstall at the client level on the CommCell Console. See Uninstall Software from CommCell Console for step-by-step instruction.
• In some cases Agent software may have already been uninstalled from a computer for various reasons, such as to release a license, or when a computer or operating system was rebuilt.  In such cases if you wish to restore the data that was previously secured to the same client, using a specific Agent, you can reinstall the Agent on the client.

• If the CommServe software is upgraded to a new software release, any deconfigured clients from up to two prior releases will be automatically upgraded to the same software release. Thus, if a deconfigured client must be reinstalled, it will need to be reinstalled using the installation package for the same software release as the CommServe.

  In cases where the deconfigured client is three or more releases older than the current release, the DBUpgrade utility can be used to upgrade the deconfigured client to the current software release.

• If the SRM Server is uninstalled from a CommServe that is using an evaluation license, the SRM Server software can only be reinstalled to the same CommServe if an additional evaluation license containing two SRM services is available.
• During a reinstall of the Content Indexing Engine, you can use the same Content Indexing Cluster name which was used for the previous content indexing engine install.

• Reinstalling the Agent will enable any pre-existing schedules (independent and those part of a schedule policy) that were previously disabled when the agent was uninstalled. However, if a change, such as an upgrade, is made to a deconfigured agent prior to its reinstallation, the schedules related to that specific agent will no longer be recognized and will need to be reconfigured manually after the reinstallation.

• Consider the following on Storage Policies:
  • Selecting a new storage policy does not impact the ability to restore data, that was secured by previous data protection operations.
  • If you select a new storage policy, the install program will subsequently prompt you to select a storage policy for all the subclients in the Agent.
  • When you select a new storage policy, the first backup will be converted to a full backup.

    Note that the Storage Policy Information may look different from the one shown in the sample image.

• Even Agents which do not create a subclient by default during an initial installation of the software will re-establish the subclients and other configurations if they were established before uninstalling the software and if the Agent was not deleted from the CommCell Browser.