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Symantec

How do you migrate computers from one Notification Server (6.x) to another?

Reposted from here.

Question
How can I migrate my computers from one Notification Server to another? I am not sure if I will keep the same Notification Server name or if I will change it. Also, if I already changed to a new Notification Server with a different name but I forgot to migrate my computers first, what can I do to fix this?Answer

Note: If you need to migrate computers from NS6 to NS7, please see Article ID: 46332 “How to migrate client machines with the Altiris Agent from NS6 to NS7?”

If you are keeping the same Notification Server name, no further actions are required for the Altiris Agents. Altiris Agents will resolve the same server name via DNS even though it is a new server. If the IP Address is changing for your server, but it is the same server name, DNS should resolve it. If you are not sure DNS will resolve the server name, try step 1 below. If you are changing the server name to something else, you could do a few things.

  1. If you are still able to have access to the old Notification Server, you can redirect the Altiris Agents to the new Notification Server.
    • Specify an alternate URL for the Altiris Agent to use to access the NS.
    • Go to Configuration tab > Altiris Agent > Altiris Agent Configuration
    • On Advanced Settings, check the box for the option where you can specify an Alternate Notification Server. If you want (just to make sure), add here the new IP Address even though the server name may be the same.
    • Write the new server information and click on Apply.
  2. If you already disposed the old Notification Server and you didn’t migrate your Altiris Agent to talk to the new server, you may need to create a login script or VB script that uses AexAgentUtil.exe with the ‘/Server:’ switch to change the server name. The default location on Altiris Agent 6.0 for the AeXAgentUtil.exe is C:/Program Files/Altiris/Altiris Agent. Here are a few options to use this switch:
    • AexAgentutil.exe /server:NewServer
    • Sometimes you can add the /web switch to the script:
      AeXAgentUtil.exe /server:myservername.domain.com /web:http://myservername.domain.com/Altiris

      Note: If you are not familiar in how to create a script, check under C:\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86\Agent Push LogonScript\PushAltirisAgentInstall for examples on one of those scripts or see article 28226, “Install the Altiris Agent using a Login Script.”

    An example would be:
    AeXAgentUtil.exe /server:myservername.domain.com  

  3. Remove the Altiris Agents from your client computers and install them after you moved the Notification Server to the new computer.

    Note: If you have access to a Deployment Server, you can create a job that pushes a script to change the Notification Server name on your client computers. Also, you can use the Task Server to push a script or a command to those client computers.

  4. If you are planning to move between domains, please see Article ID: 29334 “How to manage computers from different domains (without trust relationship between domains) from a single Notification Server” for more details.

Note: Here are also some other articles that may apply to this task of moving from one Notification Server to another:

Article 21789, “Steps to move Notification Server 6.0 SP3 from one server to another”

Article 20213, “How to move an existing Altiris NS 6.x database from one SQL server to a new SQL server”