Diagnostics Agents: Delete and re-install?

[Former Member]

Hello all,
Unfortunately the diag agents is one area where there is too much information, much of it contradictory and all of it confusing.

I am setting up a brand new Solution Manager 7.1 SR1 SP06 in our landscape. There have been previous iterations of SolMan installed but it never got working or used. So there are agents on managed systems (ECC, CRM, BW, PI etc.), some for user smdadm and some for daaadm of different releases and patches. All of them are pointing to the old SolMan systems if they are pointing at anything at all. The old SolMan systems will be completely deleted and I will start new with the install.

I am NOT interested in cutting corners now. I want a consistent, correct, supportable, stable environment for the future. If it takes me a month to install the agents correctly that is fine; I don’t want to apply 150 notes of the next six months just to get the old agents working where some behave one way and some another (e.g. the trusted thing automatic on 7.30 but not on lower, ISAGENT 8 or ISAGENT 9 etc.) and leave the maintenance of these temperamental beasts to my successors.

Is it advisable or acceptable to un-install all agents that exist in our landscape and re-install them with the 7.30 SP02 standalone installer?
If yes, should I install the on-the-fly method now or is it easy to change in the future? We don’t do HA now but if it’s better to do it now (if that is SAP’s direction) then I want to do that.
If yes to re-install with 7.30, how should I delete the existing agent?
Note 1448655 says to follow section "Deleting a Diagnostics Agent manually" of note 1259982, however note 1259982 itself says use sapinst; who’s on first?
The Agent Installation Strategy guide attached to note 1361523 says follow 797147 to remove the byte code and then remove with sapinst. We only have a dual stack PI 7.11 system with Java. Do I need to worry about the byte code in 797147 or will the new install and connection to the new SolMan just overwrite it?
The instructions under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMSETUP/Uninstallation+of+SMD+Agent say “To uninstall the diagnostics agent it is necessary to use the same installation files of the same relase of the SMD agent.” Do I really need to find old sapinst and agent SAR files, if that is even possible, or is the latest sapinst ok?
Do I need to uninstall the saphostagent since the 7.30 installer will re-install it?

To summarize, that’s three main questions:
Should I delete and re-install all the agents on the managed systems?
If yes, should I do on-the-fly method?
If yes to re-install, how?

Thanks you all.
David

P.S.
I may have overloaded myself with information; I have read all below so if I missed or misunderstood something please point it out:
AgentInstallationStrategy.pdf (attachment of 1365123)
730_Diag_Agent_Setup_Guide.pdf (attachment of 1448655)
http://service.sap.com/solutionmanager
http://service.sap.com/diagnostics
http://service.sap.com/rkt-solman
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMSETUP/Home
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMSETUP/Diagnostics+Agents#DiagnosticsAgents-Installation
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMSETUP/Uninstallation+of+SMD+Agent

69455 Servicetools for Applications ST-A/PI (ST14, RTCCTOOL, ST12)
539977 Release strategy for add-on ST-PI
797147 Wily Introscope Installation for SAP Customers
927637 Web service authentication in sapstartsrv as of Release 7.00
1259982 UNIX:Deleting an SAP System Based on NW 7.1 and Higher
1339460 Inst. NetWeaver 7.0 EHP2 - Diagnostics Agent installation
1365123 Installation of Diagnostics Agents
1448655 Inst. 7.30 - Diagnostics Agent installation
1472465 SAP Solution Manager 7.1 - System Landscape Setup Guide
1478974 Diagnostics in SAP Solution Manager 7.1
1483508 Solution Manager 7.1 - Root Cause Analysis pre-requisites
1486330 Mass Deployment of SAP Diagnostics Agent 7.30
1565954 Introscope 9 Release Notes
1572183 Authorizations for SAP Solution Manager RFC users
1635099 CCDB CTC Extractor - Prerequisites
1707141 Diagnostics Agent- How to upgrade SAP Kernel

[nicholas_chang · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Below is just my 2 cents worth.

1) I would advise and suggest to update DAA to 730 as most of the bugs are solved with latest version.

2) You can use sapinst to uninstall your current DAA in managed system.

3) Reinstall with sapinst which has DAA version 730 or download from SMP. This is very straightforward.

4) If i remember correctly, i've used DAA version 730 to uninstall DAA with lower version. No harm testing it out.

5) On the fly method works on HA environment, where there's one or more logical hostname installed in physical or virtual host, can be acchived with version 730 and configure in SOLMAN -> MANAGED SYSTEM setup

FYI, the vital part to get the DAA working is not the installation in managed system, but the "Managed System Configuration" part in SOLMAN_SETUP.

Hope it helps,

Cheers,

Nicholas Chang

[Former Member]

Thank you both. I'll do as advised and re-install everywhere, whish me luck.

P.S. Can't give both "Correct Answer" so awarded points in order of response.

[bernie_krause]

Some more thoughts ..

Is it advisable or acceptable to un-install all agents that exist in our landscape and re-install them with the 7.30 SP02 standalone installer? Acceptable – YES, advisable – It depends on the long term goals and if you have HA systems.

If yes, should I install the on-the-fly method now or is it easy to change in the future? We don’t do HA now but if it’s better to do it now (if that is SAP’s direction) then I want to do that.Go with the latest version if at all possible

If yes to re-install with 7.30, how should I delete the existing agent?

Use SAPInst to uninstall

Note 1448655 says to follow section "Deleting a Diagnostics Agent manually" of note 1259982, however note 1259982 itself says use sapinst; who’s on first? Use SAPINST and then Delete anything that the SAP tool does not clean up with OS commands

The Agent Installation Strategy guide attached to note 1361523 says follow 797147 to remove the byte code and then remove with sapinst. We only have a dual stack PI 7.11 system with Java. Do I need to worry about the byte code in 797147 or will the new install and connection to the new SolMan just overwrite it?  To point a SMD/DAA Agent to a different SolMan system 1) stop SMD/DAA    2) re-register to the proper SolMan

The instructions under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SMSETUP/Uninstallation+of+SMD+Agent say “To uninstall the diagnostics agent it is necessary to use the same installation files of the same relase of the SMD agent.” Do I really need to find old sapinst and agent SAR files, if that is even possible, or is the latest sapinst ok? Latest should be ok, if it does not delete all the file then use OS commands to clean up the dir /usr/sap/DAA or SMD

Do I need to uninstall the saphostagent since the 7.30 installer will re-install it? Uninstall is not required, you will likely want to upgrade SAPHost agent as described in SAP Help - http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwpi711/helpdata/en/48/c6f9627a004da5e10000000a421937/content.htm