NightWatchman v7.0 upgrade – 10 Questions that customers ask

Version 7.0, the latest release of NightWatchman, 1E's PC Power and Patch Management solution, contains many new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to improve the performance of the product and its components. Within months of its release to the market, we already have had a significant number of customers upgrading to the latest version. Such customers often reach out to us with a bunch of upgrade related questions. In my role within the 1E Support team as a support engineer, I have been exposed to quite a lot of them. From my own experiences, and with the help of some deep-dive trend analysis, I have hand-picked 10 of the most popular questions we get asked by NightWatchman v7.0 customers. Here’s the list:
[accordion style="style3″ title="Where do I get the latest version of NightWatchman?"]NightWatchman v7.0 is available in the “software downloads” folder on the 1E Support Portal. All future hotfixes/updates for the version will be available in the same folder as and when they are released.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="Do I need a new license key?"]Yes – Indeed! NightWatchman v7.0 is a major release. All major releases for all 1E products require new license keys. License key requests are now handled directly by our dedicated Sales Operations team. Send an email to salesops@1e.com and get your new keys generated.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="What if I have used the trial key to install it? How do I relicense it?"]
To run the 1E Agent beyond the 30-day license period, the product needs to be licensed. If WakeUp Server is initially installed using the 30-day evaluation license, it can be re licensed later, once you have the full license, by running the following command line (from an elevated command prompt):

Similarly, for the 1E agent, the command is: nwmsvc.exe -relicense=ABCD-1234-5678-8765-4321 In each case, ABCD-1234-5678-8675-4321 is the original license key. *It’s important to note that the license key should be entered manually. Please do not copy-paste. If you are not running with a time-limited license and you see the license expiry notification on NightWatchman component service startup, contact 1E customer support with the license key used.
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[accordion style="style3″  title="What are the supported NightWatchman versions for upgrade?"]The 1E supported software upgrade path for NightWatchman is from v6.5 to v7.0, as these are the ‘in support’ versions. We do not anticipate any issues when upgrading from v6.1 but this would need to be “best endeavors support” as this version has been out of support since April 2014.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″  title="Do I need a separate server to host ActiveEfficiency? Do I need the “Scout” if I don’t use AppClarity or Shopping?"]NightWatchman 7.0 uses ActiveEfficiency to synchronise cloud-based data from 1E, such as power consumption figures for different hardware models. NightWatchman can be installed without ActiveEfficiency Server; however, data synchronization with 1E is not possible without it. If ActiveEfficiency is only being used for NightWatchman Enterprise you may install it on the same server. However, if you have (or intend to have) other 1E solutions implemented, you should host it on a separate server adequately configured to support the functionality required. NightWatchman does not use any of the data that gets collected by the Scout, so the Scout is not required if ActiveEfficiency server is only being used with NightWatchman.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="We're planning on installing NightWatchman 7.0 on a new server. How do I backup and restore the database?"]This is perhaps the most popularly question asked irrespective of the version of the product. The NightWatchman Management Center database, AgilityFrameworkReporting (named such for historical reasons), holds all the information returned by the NightWatchman clients and the WakeUp agents and forms the basis for the reports. We already have a detailed public facing knowledge base article enlisting the recommended steps. If you need more information on how to backup and restore databases on SQL server, you may visit the following link, https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187048(v=sql.110).aspx[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="Do you provide legacy support for previous agents if we upgrade NightWatchman Management Center and WakeUp to V7? Will V6.5 and V6.1 agents still work?"]Although we strongly recommend a complete upgrade (both server and client side) for NightWatchman v7.0, in case of a constrained timeline you can simply upgrade the server components. The clients must be configured with the name of the server hosting the NightWatchman Web Service (AFWebService) component which they will post data to and retrieve policy from. v6.5 agents will work. 6.1 agents might work but they haven’t been tested since the version is out of support. Technically it will work. That said, you should be looking to upgrade your clients soon, as the older clients may not be able to take advantage of newer features available.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="For the server, how do I uninstall our current installation of NightWatchman? Also, is there any potential for damaging our SCCM installation/functionality by removing 1E?"]Your current installation can be uninstalled from the control panel on the server. That said, if you want to preserve the historical data, a backup of the AFR database is definitely recommended. The console that you see for NightWatchman is just the front-end of the application. Uninstalling/reinstalling it doesn’t cause any problem as long it is pointing to the correct SQL server where the database is hosted. You can always install a new version and point to the database. If you are not worried about preserving the historical data, you may well uninstall and start from scratch. Removing NightWatchman/Wakeup will not damage your SMS/SCCM installation.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="What precaution do I need to take when I uninstall the server components? Will our users get any kind of warning messages or pop-ups from the 1E agents?"]NightWatchman Console, Wakeup Server, and 1E agent can all be removed from the control panel. Uninstalling 1E Web WakeUp may leave the “1E Web WakeUp, Import Authorization” SQL batch job. This can be removed manually following the uninstall. Uninstalling the 1E Agent will not show any warning messages to the end user.[/accordion]
[accordion style="style3″ title="I don’t see a new version of Enterprise View. Do I use the old one??"]Yes! There isn’t a new version of Enterprise view released alongside NightWatchman 7.0. You can continue to use the version released with v6.5 while upgrading the rest of the components. The older version for Enterprise view has been tested to work seamlessly with the latest release of NightWatchman.[/accordion]
We hope you found this informative and hope to do more of these types of posts in the future for our other products.