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Hello currently I’m looking into upgrading our ERA client to version 6. I was told on the phone by Diego from Eset Business support in San Diego that ERA v6 is mainly geared towards larger companies and that smaller companies are recommended to continue to use v5.

Is this true? and if true what advantages/disadvantages would we get from upgrading for a company of around 50 employees?

They provided me instructions on how to go about doing the upgrade to ERA v6 and it says that all clients need to have EES v5 removed. Eset support told me that I would be able to do a push install of EES v6 to workstations and then remove EES v5 with an uninstall task afterwards. Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks

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2

I would love to confirm this but i have been in contact with ESET multiple times in the past 2 months with trying to get it installed. Each part of the install i have had issues on. I am now stuck at a point where i am trying to install the Remote administrator manually but alas i am told i do not have sufficient privileges to install. ( i am logged in as the network admin. Makes no sense and i have not heard back from them in a couple weeks now

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It is not an easy process, especially if you’re going to the OVA

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Hello Eric,

For the time being, Remote Administrator 5 is easier to set up in smaller networks. We plan to further develop the All-In-One Installer for version 6 so that it can automate more install\upgrade tasks in a greater variety of software environments. The impetus for the major changes in version 6 has been to make it easier for large customers with diffuse networks to manage our products (especially with respect to upgrading antivirus installations to later builds remotely).

Once you do get Remote Administrator 6 installed on one of your servers, the only disadvantage besides the UI learning curve will be that remote install tasks do not show their granular status as they are in progress. They will only inform you that they are launching and that they have completed, successfully or otherwise. You will benefit from more robust reporting + notification options, as well as the ability to order the Remote Administrator Agent to let you know the full list of what software is installed on each machine.

In Remote Administrator 6, you will first deploy its software agent utility to each machine on the network that you intend to upgrade\install ESET on. This process works much like the push install that you are familiar with from Remote Administrator 5.

Once the Agent is present on each machine, you can send all the workstations a Software Install task for the Endpoint Antivirus v6 package. That will automatically uninstall v5 before installing v6. Once that switchover is complete, the Endpoint 6 will urge you to reboot said machine(s).

Note that if older ESET products are protected with a “protect setup parameters” password, you’ll want to first get rid of the password before deploying Endpoint 6 to the targets. Also, if any machines are running NOD32\File Security 4.5, you’ll need to first explicitly uninstall those, reboot the target machine(s), then software install version 6 of Endpoint\File Security.

Lastly, if you elect to remain on Endpoint v5, you will still benefit from most of v6’s scanning features. The Advance Memory Scanner and Exploit Scanner were both backported from the v6 products, shortly after the release of v6. All that you would be missing is Endpoint Security’s Botnet traffic scanner, and the behavioral HIPS scanning mode, known as “Smart Mode”. These latter two aren’t as relevant for the detection of CryptoWall carrier infections. To further close the gap between v5 and v6 scanning capabilities, you can turn on “advanced heuristics on file execution” as it is on by default in v6, but not on v5.

Kind Regards,

ESET Customer Care

5

Hello Kris,

I apologize that we haven’t been able to help you resolve the installation issue earlier. By chance are you attempting to install over the top of an existing Remote Administrator 5 installation? If so, then that will explain the odd permissions error when you attempt to install the Remote Administrator part of the software ecosystem. If you have another server that you can install Remote Administrator 6 on, I would recommend doing so in order to ‘cross-migrate’ the AV installations to version 6 without disruption in ability to manage the clients.

If that isn’t an option, you’ll want to first take note of your existing Remote Administrator 5 policies, policy rules, dynamic groups, notifications, and reports. Unfortunately it’s not yet possible to migrate these settings from a v5 installation to v6. You’ll instead need to re-create them manually within Remote Administrator 6. With all of the above noted, you’ll uninstall Remote Administrator 5, Server and Console, then go through with the installation of all the Remote Administrator 6 components. Once that is complete, you will want to deploy the Remote Administrator Agent to all workstations and servers.

Kind Regards,

ESET Customer Care

6

To update on this in case anyone sees this in future, it is because the v5 server needs to be uninstalled for the v6 server to be installed. It is not upgradeable.

I would test v6 heavily before using it in production because for us it is very very buggy.

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Unfortunately ESET V6 business products are a huge mess and a big step backwards. Not only does the new web based administration console suck really badly it’s also very cumbersome to install and use. And the client deployment and activation is also a big step backward. Preinstalling clients on a thick image for cloning not supported etc. Our ESET license expires in two weeks and this is the first time we are really seriously considering doing a last minute switch to Kaspersky.

Every year this time we are contacted by Kaspersky reps who try to win us over. So far the only reason why we have not done it yet is that ESET has been much easier to manage and less bloated overall. With V6 ESET has absolutely lost everything we liked about ESET and I see no point why we should not switch to Kaspersky as it offers a bit better protection. We have used ESET for over 10 years and the last 5 years been offered a much better price by Kaspersky but still said “no” to them. But after testing V6 I think we won’t be saying “no” anymore after we get Kaspersky’s this years offer in couple of days.

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Hello,

ESET Remote Administrator 6 is a new product and like any new product is going to have a learning curve commensurate with that. Issues and feature requests are being addressed as they come in with a high priority. In the meantime, if you are happy with ESET Remote Administrator 5, why not stick with it? It is still fully-supported, and if you ever have any questions about how to do something in any version of the software, you can always reach out to business support at +1 (866) 343-3738 (toll-free in North America).

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

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I’m sorry to say but what worries us is that we have now seen the glimpse of future with ESET. And we do not like it one bit. If we stay with ESET we still do have to switch eventually to V6 and there’s just no guarantee that it will be any better than it is now.

First, the new web console is just plain out horrible in every regard. Just solely the fact that ESET has dropped a proper management console and replaced with only web based just annoys us to no end. Why only web based? Using web based consoles is just so much more cumbersome than having a proper MMC style of console. The only reason I see is that ESET is too lazy to program the console for separate platforms.
This new web based console is way slower and noninformative compared to old one. And I thought that Kaspersky’s MMC style console was bloated and slow. But as we did a test deployment of Kaspersky this week I actually realized that ESET V6 administration is just the worst. Pretty much everything about it is a big step backwards compared to Remote Administrator 5. Now it seems I’ll take Kaspersky any day over this new version.

And, second just the fact that there’s no way of installing a fully activated and preconfigured ESET client that points back to remote administration server on a thick image for cloning, is sufficient for us to drop ESET. It’s baffling that nobody has thought that is is pretty much essential for imaging machines. The overall client deployment and management in V6 is just one big fail from start to finish.

I know this sounds harsh but V6 has been a disappointment to no end, and we feel that ESET has completely lost the plot.

2 Spice ups
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I have had no luck getting the push installs to work on the two computers I am testing this on. I did install it manually on one and it is showing in the console. I am very frustrated that the push installs are nothing close to easy as the web tutorials and you tube videos show.

1 Spice up
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I want to put in my 2 cents on this. We upgraded (Sure, because that worked. NOT) our Server to Eset 6 and it has been such a mess with the web console to the push of installs to… Well it just plain sucked. We went back to ERA5.x but now my issue is, how to uninstall the Remote agent? Most machines still had Eset5 on them but because ERA agent uses the same protocols I can ge the clients to check into the ERA 5 server anymore. Looks like manual uninstall time

I talked to different support reps at ESET and some tell me that the new ERA agent will work with Eest 5 installed and some say it won’t, Whats the story ESET? I moved from Kaspersky to ESET years ago, I may go back because this has been such an issue

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