My battle with Avast 7 clients continue. I didn’t choose to upgrade anything, but several got caught when 7.0.1436 was out causing a number of clients to get a bad version that cannot connect back to SBC v6. Today, I cleaned up those on my local network, BUT I have about a dozen laptops that are not local that were successfully connecting through the internet to SBC v6 when the client was also v6, but now were automatically upgraded to v7 clients and cannot connect at all to SBC v6. Installing 7.0.1438 client didn’t fix it. I resolved one today by creating a VPN connection so the client could get a license assigned. But once the VPN disconnected, the client simply cannot connect to the server. Funny thing is that it can access the mirror just fine on the same server, just not the management console. Sigh.
So… what do I need to do to correct this? Will installing AEA-EPS fix it?
If that’s the answer, does an upgrade work? Or do I need to uninstall SBC and start over with AEA?
I hate the extra work this is causing me, but I just need it resolved now… HELP.
If Defender is off, and the PC has been rebooted, and still no communication:
Verify SOA console revision is current @ 1.2.2.8
Verify the copmputer running SOA console has it’s software firewall turned off.
Verify that the client is at revision 7.0.1438 and has been rebooted.
At the client, open avast!, settings, troubleshooting, avast Administrative Console:
Verify port settings and Server/IP settings (port 25322 / IP address of the console)
SBC IS seeing and managing v7.0.1438 clients on our two local subnets, just not the few that are not local. So it’s not a matter that it’s incompatible obviously. So I’m a little confused why, if it’s working for two subnets, why not those connecting over the internet?
Firewall is not turned off, but ports 8731, 8732 and 25322 are open for any address on all network types and allow edge traversal. It is my understanding that should be enough to allow communication in. And since it was working before, obviously it was enough. So why isn’t it now? Is it the client side that’s not able to connect to a management server across the internet?
Also, in other discussions here, I’m reading that SOA supports only a single local subnet and that AEA should be used when the network is more complex than that. I used ADMN before, so I’m more than happy to go with AEA if my license will support that or can be converted to allow it.
I started avast! with ADNM 4.8. Last summer, my license was reissued so I could upgrade to SBC 6.0. Still have two years left. Is this license going to work for SOA? What about for AEA?
If I upgrade to SOA, am I going to have other issues because of the multiple subnets and internet-based clients?
OK, then. I will follow the advice here and disregard your previous remarks about SOA not supporting multiple subnets.
Status: Attemped to upgrade. Upgrade failed. Log would be attached, but it’s too big. Happy to send it to someone if they want to see why it failed.
Ran CCleaner cleaning both junk and registry. Attempting to install again. Downloading mirror…
Update: Mirror completed and 2nd install worked. After updating the firewall settings, both local and remote client seem to be connecting again, so this IS the answer. Thank you.
So all that remains is the fact that the upgrade failed. Again, I’ll be happy to send the log to someone if they want to look at the reasons for that to fix it for other people.
if you are using multiple subnets, then SOA may not be the best console. The AEA console does support multiple subnets, and therefore, would be your best console at this point. Sorry I missed the multiple subnet statement. You would have to use additional SOA’s for each subnet, or:
Yesterday we solved this problem by changing the Firewall settings to allow Exclusions in our Group policy. This solved the problem. After I did a GPupdate and rebooted the computer, that had the SOA fully functional and everything worked.
Yes, and that’s how I solved it initially with SBC–fixed the firewall settings. So SOA seems to be functioning fine with multiple subnets and internet clients as long as the firewall doesn’t restrict to local subnet only. We do only have one Active Directory domain, so I think I’ll stick with SOA for the moment. I can always look at the features in AEA to see if there are any that interest me. Since the original license was purchased for ADNM, I should be able to convert back to the enterprise console if there are features I need. If not, 70 computers all with the same settings is fine for SOA.
The only complaint I have is that it occasionally just “stops” That is the console is there, but client can’t connect to it. There’s nothing in the log to indicate a problem other than activity stops. I never had that problem with ADNM, and it happened today with SOA about 30 minutes after I installed it and rebooted the server. Sigh. It happened with SBC at least once a day, so I have a scheduled task to restart the admin console both shortly after server startup and at a specific time every day to attempt to keep it active. Works most of the time…
if you were an ADNM user, the AEA console looks exactly like the ADNM console, because it IS the ADNM console, with the additional changes necessary for the version 7 product (behavioural shield, firewall, etc) that were not available in the version 4 product. Most ADNM users are happy with the new AEA. We fought the multiple subnet issues unsuccessfully with SBC, so I extremely pleased with your success with this issue. SOA uses it’s own embedded SQL Lite. So, is SQL still loaded on this machine? I have found that SQL uses almost all availqable memory, and threrfore can cause system delays by forcing the system to “page out” If SQL is not being used, you could just disable this service to see if it is causing this issue. I will see if there are any other issues that can cause this delay. Do you notice any other applications having an issue? Does SOA hang, lockup?
I used the advanced install and told it to continue using the install SQL Express. It’s also used for WSUS, so no sense in running multiple database systems. I have it restricted to 2GB RAM with 4GB in the server, so it can’t use all the ram up–only half.
The server runs three applications–WSUS, Avast, and LanSweeper, so it’s never terribly busy, and rarely comes close to using the max memory available to it. Avast is the only app that has any issues on this server. Will watch it over time to see if the issues continue. The other problem I’ve had is that Avast has corrupted its database three times. The solution has always been to restore a previous version. It just picks up and continues from there. No idea what might be causing those issues.
Glad they finally updated ADNM. Still debating whether to switch back or not. It was more stable for me…
I am off to Prague for the avast! resellers meeting. I will get 3 days with avast! engineers for training prior to the reseller meeting. If you know ADNM, you know AEA!
Just out of curiosity, if you have SOA installed can you just replace it with AEA? SOA was recommended by the avast support rep when I explained to him that I had purchased 150 license for 4.8 and he told me to move to SOA. It looks nothing like ADNM which is what we used to use.
Yes, you can use AEA. However, they are notcompatible database wise, so you will have to create a new database. If you are using SQL (at least 200%, then you can use existing SQL instead of using the option of SQL 2008 Express. AEA is ADNM2, so you already know better than 90% of the product. If you go this way, email me for the mirror patch.