Implementation Guide › Installing and Customizing a Windows Endpoint › Before You Begin › Upgrades and Reinstallations

Upgrades and Reinstallations

When upgrading CA Access Control, note the following:

• Read the Release Notes.

  This document contains information about supported platforms, CA Access Control versions you can upgrade from, known issues, considerations, and other important information you should read before installing CA Access Control.

• We recommend that you perform a scaled-down internal testing of the new release before you upgrade your production environment.
• You may need to reboot the computer when you upgrade CA Access Control for the installation to complete. Future patches may not require a reboot.

  Note: For information about which releases of CA Access Control require a reboot when you upgrade, see the Release Notes.

• If your environment is set up with a PMDB hierarchy or you are setting such an environment, we recommend that you:
  • Install or upgrade each computer in your hierarchy bottom-up (subscribers first).

    Upgraded PMDBs having subscribers with an earlier version may result in erroneous commands being sent. This can happen as a result of new PMDBs containing classes and properties that do not exist in the earlier version PMDBs.

    Note: A PMDB hierarchy running on a single computer can be upgraded simultaneously.

  • Do not upgrade during PMDB or policy updates.
  • Back up subscriber and PMDB policies.

  Note: Earlier PMDB versions are permitted to have later versions of subscribers, but not vice versa. As commands in earlier versions are supported in later versions, earlier PMDBs can propagate to current CA Access Control subscribers.

• You must use the same encryption key that was used before the upgrade.
• The installation program automatically saves and upgrades registry settings of your previous installation. If an earlier version's registry key was relocated, the upgrade process copies your previous settings to the new location.

  CA Access Control registry settings are stored in the following location:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComputerAssociates\AccessControl
  

• Full auditing is enabled by default when you upgrade CA Access Control.

  Important! Depending on the rules you have in the database, the number of audit events that CA Access Control records to the log file could significantly increase as a result of this feature. We recommend that you review your audit log file size and backup settings.

  Note: For more information about full auditing and how to configure and use the registry settings for audit log backup, see the Endpoint Administration Guide for Windows.