Pre-Installation
Here are McAfee recommendations for installing a new McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (McAfee ePO) server or upgrading an existing instance. The first step is to download and run the latest Pre-Installation Auditor (PIA). If the PIA tool finds any issues, it will guide you to the relevant technical articles.
Without the hotfix HF972377, McAfee Agent will not start on Yosemite. As a result, the communication between the ePolicy Orchestrator server and the Mac fails, and you would be unable to manage the Mac from ePolicy Orchestrator. For more information on the McAfee Agent for Mac 4.8 known issues with Yosemite, see McAfee KnowledgeBase article. Version: CMA 3.5.5: CMA 3.6.0: MA 4.0: MA 4.5: MA 4.6: ePolicy Orchestrator 4.6 No: No: Yes Yes Yes ePolicy Orchestrator 4.5 No: Yes. Yes Yes Yes ePolicy Orchestrator 4.0.
Epo Agent For Mac Os
Note: To manually perform these checks, or if your company policy will not allow you to run the PIA tool, complete the McAfee ePO installation and patch upgrade checklist (registration required).
In addition to running the PIA tool, review these items prior to attempting a McAfee ePO upgrade:
- Validate that you have a known good disaster recovery snapshot. View the “Server Snapshot Dashboard” in McAfee ePO. This monitor tells you the status of your latest snapshot. See KB87976 for additional details.
- Confirm you have a known good backup of the McAfee ePO SQL database available that was captured after the snapshot task completed.
- Confirm you have a backup of the McAfee ePO installation directory.
If this is a new McAfee ePO server installation, confirm all required ports for McAfee ePO communication are open. See KB66797 for a complete list of ports needed for communication through a firewall.
Supplemental Documentation:
Systems with a McAfee Agent installed that report to McAfee ePO are referred to as “Managed Systems.” When the McAfee Agent is installed on a client, the agent automatically initiates communication to McAfee ePO shortly after the agent services start. When using McAfee Agent 5.x.x with McAfee ePO, the manifest based policy improves the scalability of McAfee ePO. McAfee Agent fetches only the changed policy settings from McAfee ePO, using fewer resources for comparing or merging settings. Also, McAfee ePO doesn't have to compute the changed policies at each agent-server communication.
Post-Installation and Upgrade
After the upgrade completes, it’s a good idea to do a quick health check on the McAfee ePO server by confirming the following:
- Confirm you can log on and navigate in the McAfee ePO console
- Confirm agent-server communication is successful
- Enable any server tasks you may have disabled prior to upgrading
Epo Agent For Mac 10.15
Epo Agent For Mac Catalina
If you have upgraded to McAfee ePO 5.9.X or later from version 5.3.3 or earlier, you need to migrate certificates from SHA-1 to SHA-2. See KB87017 for details.
Epo Agent Force Uninstall
Note: If you have upgraded to McAfee ePO 5.9.1 only, you need to apply McAfee ePO 5.9.1 Hotfix 1226775 before migrating your certificates. See KB90182 for details.
Backup and Recovery
If your upgrade was unsuccessful, it should roll back and leave McAfee ePO in a functional state. If the rollback also fails, you may need to perform a disaster recovery on your McAfee ePO server. The preferred method of disaster recovery is a snapshot recovery. Instructions for that can be found here.
Note: Known issue: Disaster Recovery Snapshot task fails on a clustered McAfee ePO
If you do not have a snapshot or the snapshot recovery is failing, you can follow these instructions to manually recover McAfee ePO: