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question asked: Apr 08 '13, 1:29 p.m.
question was seen: 5,515 times
last updated: Apr 09 '13, 9:44 a.m.

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BuildForge Agent/Engine compatibility question

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Jozef Vandenmooter (163●3●29●33) | asked Apr 08 '13, 1:29 p.m.

Hi,

We are upgrading a BF 7.0.2 install to 7.1.3.5. We would like to keep the old environment running for a while longer (we have two BF Engine licenses) to be able to fall back to it if necessary.

I already know the BF 7.0.2 agents work with later versions of BF (http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21389011), but is the reverse also true? Will our old BF 7.0.2 instance work with the 7.1.3.5 agents??

If not, we won't be able to upgrade the agents until we are confident we won't need the old environment anymore. This would be inconvenient since we would need an additional testing and validation round.

Thanks,

Jozef

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Spencer Murata (2.3k●11●59●71) | answered Apr 09 '13, 9:38 a.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
edited Apr 09 '13, 9:44 a.m.
The best answer for your situation would be to incrementally upgrade some of the agents in the farm and make it easy for yourself to exclude them from the build pool if necessary.  Then just test the newer agents with your current builds and see how it goes.  There PROBABLY won't be any issue, since any newer functionality in the agent will just not be used by the 7.0.2 console, but that use case is really just best effort on our part.  We cannot guarantee it will work, but we try hard to allow it to work.  Its roughly equivalent to deprecating a method.  We want to allow you to continue using it, but its really at your own risk.

~Spencer
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Ryan Ruscett (1.0k●4●13) | answered Apr 08 '13, 1:44 p.m.
edited Apr 08 '13, 1:46 p.m.

Hello,

This is known as Agent Interoperability. I think I spelled that right. . The ability of the agent to work with various versions of the console working with various versions of the agent.

7.0.2 agent should work with 7.1.3.5. Keep in mind 7.1.3.5 has better functionality an additional features. These changes hve also caused the agent to have to changes including defect fixes as well.

Now, to have 7.0.2 instance running 7.1.3.5 agent. This cold work for somet things, but we do see a lot of issues with this and I would not recommend it.

FIX:

The best thing to do is install a 7.1.3.5 agent on your target machine WITH a 7.0;.2 agent. Just have one agent the 7.1.3.5 agent using the default 5555 port and the other agent using something different. Say 7777.  This would allow you to have two agents on one machine. They will both be able to connect to there designed Build Forg Consoles.

There is also more information in the info center under Agent Interoperability.

Hope this helps.

Thanks!

Comments
Jozef Vandenmooter commented Apr 08 '13, 6:40 p.m.

Thanks for the reply.

Most of our deployment machines are Windows boxes... Is it possible to have multiple agents running as a service on Windows boxes??

Jozef

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Ryan Ruscett (1.0k●4●13) | answered Apr 09 '13, 7:56 a.m.

Hello,

Yeah, I have no reason to believe that this would not work. As long as the two agents do not share a port number, you shoul be good to go.

Let us know if you have any issues or additional concerns.

Thannks!

Comments
Spencer Murata commented Apr 09 '13, 9:33 a.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

The problem with multiple agents on Windows is we install as a service and the installing service will overwrite the previously installed service.  That is the limitation with multiple agents on Windows.  I don't know that there is a workaround to allow two versions of the agent to exist in Windows.

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