Windows Agents not upgrading to V11

[ejenner]

Had about 10 or so Windows Agents which didn't upgrade during the upgrade to V11. Not logging a support ticket as I'm getting through it by myself.

But across that many machines it's a pretty consistent issue.

If I go and manually run the VAWRedist.msi it'll first of all say that I require administrator permission to run the file. So I wonder if that is possibly the issue?

If I open an administrator command prompt and run the file from the command line it'll bypass the administrator requirement.

After that... in some cases it'll say the distribution service is required. So I'll run VeeamDistributionSvc.msi (also from admin command prompt).

Then if I run VAWRedist.msi once again it'll tell me there is a previous installation already in progress. (sometimes this appears when running the VeeamDistributionSvc.msi). This can be cleared by rebooting the server.

After the reboot the message changes to say an installation has failed and the changes will be reversed. And from then on it'll allow the installation of VAWRedist.msi. Back to the B&R console to rescan and sometimes other things like running a backup to finalise the repair of the agents on these machines.

All are Windows 2012 R2 but apart from that I cannot see any further commonality.

This didn't happen with any of the previous upgrades and we've been with VAW from the start.

[Dima P.]

Hello EJ,

VAWRedist.msi is a package that Veeam B&R installs to the distribution server but it should not be deployed on the client machine.

[ejenner]

That may well be the case. But as there is a problem with the agent not deploying automatically I'm fixing that problem by running VAWRedist.msi. It seems to fix the problem one way or another.

As I said above, it prompts to say changes are being reversed which seems to clear the failed installation.

Maybe not the finest solution which would be deployed if I knew why it was happening and if there was an official guide for resolving it.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Actual agent packages that are pushed by VBR server to a client machines are under "C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Agents\".
You can run it manually to see where installation fails on a client machine, for example "msiexec Veeam_B&R_Endpoint_x64.msi" /L*V "c:\temp\install.log"
/Cheers!

[AdamDuvall]

I'm running into this issue as well when trying to upgrade components on veeam servers. Proxy, VCG, repository. Is there an official veeam response/fix for this?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Adam,

Please open a support ticket for your upgrade issues.
We have had thousands of upgrades going, so it must be something infrastructure specific for your case.

/Thanks!

[ejenner]

Infrastructure specific for his case... and my case. Specific in both cases. Haha.

[ejenner]

Myself and colleagues have been seeing this message when working on other applications. In this case an uninstallation of the HP Smart Storage Administrator application has brought it up.

[ejenner]

I'm having the same problem again going from a previous build of V11 to the current build. It doesn't fail on every physical server, just a handful of them. So I'll do them manually. Maybe the problem will be resolved in v12.

[Dima P.]

Hello EJ,

Try this article, based on my google search this error might be related to the registry issues which MS tool can fix: Fix problems that block programs from being installed or removed. Let us know how it goes!

[ejenner]

The error seems to be variations on the theme of "another installation is already in progress".

I think from running it manually I can see the process potentially fails on updating pre-requisites. I had to run SharedManagementObjects.msi, sqllocaldb.msi and SQLSysClrTypes.msi files manually and then I could upgrade the agent.

[Dima P.]

Thanks for the update EJ!

I had to run SharedManagementObjects.msi, sqllocaldb.msi and SQLSysClrTypes.msi files manually and then I could upgrade the agent

Sounds right, glad that we will fix this behavior once and for all in upcoming major version were we no longer require MS SQL components on the client machine.