Administer Agents › Manage the Decommissioning of a Host with an Agent

Manage the Decommissioning of a Host with an Agent

When you are notified that your company plans to replace hardware on which you have installed agents, consider the following process to minimize the impact. This process reassigns the original touchpoints to agents installed on new hardware. The reassignment allows processes that rely on these touchpoints to continue to run without modification.

Two common situations follow:

• The old hosts are removed and then the new hosts are added. This practice is common when IP addresses are reassigned.
• The new host is added and then the old host is removed.

In the case where the plan is to remove old hosts before deploying new ones, consider the following approach:

1. Do the following before a host is removed from the network:
   1. Identify the agent name in CA Process Automation for the host that is being decommissioned.

      The Agents palette in the Configuration Browser lists all agents with their status.

   2. Identify the touchpoints associated with the agent targeted for deletion.

      On the Agents palette in the Configuration Browser, select the agent, and click the Associated Touchpoints tab to view the list of touchpoints to evaluate for reassignment.

   3. Uninstall the agent software from the host being decommissioned or repurposed.
2. Install the agent software on the host that replaces the decommissioned host.
3. Associate the impacted touchpoint with the new agent.
4. Remove the agent for the decommissioned host from CA Process Automation.

   On the Agents palette in the Configuration Browser, right-click the agent, select Lock, and then right-click and select Delete.

In the case where the new hosts are brought into the network before the old hosts are taken out, consider the following approach:

1. Install an agent on each new host.
2. Associate the impacted touchpoints with new agents.
3. Use Bulk Agent Removal to remove the agents that have been replaced.

More information:

Remove Selected Agents in Bulk

Remove Unused Empty Touchpoints in Bulk

Associate a Touchpoint with a Different Agent