Upgrading the Cloud Agent

You can use the Qualys Cloud Platform to upgrade your Cloud Agent to the latest available version. To upgrade, Cloud Agent must be connected to the Qualys Cloud Platform and must have auto-upgrade permission in the configuration profile. 

If a Cloud Agent is not configured for auto-upgrade, the software distribution tools can package an installer of the latest version, and the new version is not installed.

The Windows Cloud Agent installer supports a command line argument ("PatchInstall") that enables an upgrade in place of the installed agent. This retains the agent UUID, Customer ID, and Activation Key configuration of the Cloud Agent on the agent host.

 It is required for software distribution tools to use a PatchInstall command line argument to upgrade existing installed Windows agents. If this command line argument is not used, the installer fails to upgrade the existing installed Windows Agent.

Steps to Manually Upgrade Cloud Agent

The following are the steps to manually upgrade the cloud Agent:

1. Download the latest version of the Cloud Agent installer on your asset. For the steps, refer to the Download Cloud Agent Installer.
2. Save the Cloud Agent Installer at a location other than the Cloud Agent installation directory (C:\Program Files\Qualys\QualysAgent\) or the configuration directory (C:\ProgramData\Qualys\QualysAgent\).
3. Execute the following commands in the command prompt with administrative privileges.  
   
   For .exe installer:
   QualysCloudAgent.exe PatchInstall=TRUE
   
   For .msi installer:
   Msiexec.exe /i CloudAgent_x86.msi Patchinstall=true
    

   To learn more about MSI package installation, refer to the Installation Steps for MSI Package.

    Do not append the Customer ID or Activation Key arguments while using the patchinstall argument.

 You are not required to disable the self-protection option to upgrade a Cloud Agent manually.

Cloud Agent Self-Patching

The Cloud Agent self-patching feature provides a way to automatically upgrade your Cloud Agents to latest binary version available. By default, the Cloud Agent has the auto-upgrade option enabled. When you assign a configuration profile with self-patching enabled your Cloud Agents, they download the latest available binary version and auto-upgrade without any manual intervention.

Refer to Prevent Agent Binary Auto Update, learn more about preventing Cloud Agent auto-upgrades.