Important speed and reliability update for KLC on kservers running 6.2!

FYI to all - Mike Sheffey asked me to run this a few weeks back. All went fine (it ran in a couple of mins). Since then we've been playing with it and have noticed better stability and speed. In my opinion, those of you who are actually using LC, this would be a good patch to run.

Please note, make sure to follow the update instructions posted above (push new agent out to handfuls at a time).

We've been running this patch for a few weeks now as well.  I didn't run into any problems with the update.  During our team meeting the next day my techs had already noticed this being quicker and much more stable.  

I'd definitely recommend installing this patch.

I have been using this update for the past two weeks. IMHO it is a HUGE success that has been almost two years coming. KLC looked great in demo, but in practice it just did not work. It was waaaaaaay too slow to be usable, especially the remote control feature (which, as an MSP, is extremely important for it to work quickly.)

Mike asked us to give it a spin and immediately after installing the update on my VSA and pushing out a few of the new 6.2.0.0 - 1.2.0.22 agents, it worked like it was always intended to work.

Because of the problems, I always used the Remote Control (VNC) tab on the Quick Launch popout, but now I use Desktop Access (which is a link to the KLC feature.) Desktop Access allow fitting the remote screen to the size of the active window which is more important now with so many screen sizes available.

What really makes it great is that it works in Chrome without having that pesky noActiveX plug-in downloading every time I want to do a remote session. It is totally seamless.

Additionally, the thumbnails come up quickly, the File Manager works without hiccups and there is even a VPN tab that I haven't dived into yet, but it looks promising.

All in all, I have been very happy with this improvement.

Randy

Has anyone tested this updated agent on a mac os x yet?  We have only updated the agent on one mac, but the klc procedure is failing on the system any time we run it right now?  

We are also seeing a few agents not updating properly.  Here are the logs for one of the failed updates to the agent (Note: we havent seen agent updates fail like this and even after restarting the agent service they are still failing, but we havent tried a complete reboot of the system yet)

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Done Failed ELSE in step 3

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Done FAILED in ELSE step 3, execute script K Agent Update Done Msg (ID = 134)

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Done Msg Failed ELSE in step 1

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Done Msg FAILED in ELSE step 1, execute script Deploy Live Connect (ID = 949)

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 Deploy Live Connect Failed THEN in step 25

11:21:11 29-Dec-11 Deploy Live Connect FAILED in processing THEN step 25, Get Variable, with error File Open Failed, Get content from file C:\Program Files\MSP Folder\Agent\AgentID\klcVersion.txt

11:20:03 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Success THEN

11:20:03 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Script K Agent Update Done was successfully scheduled to run in 1 minutes

11:20:03 29-Dec-11 K Agent Update Helper Success THEN

Bryan,

On that Mac agent, please log into it and remove the following folder: /Library/Kaseya/Proc

Once that is done, try to KLC to it again and let us know if it passes and/or you receive the same error at Step 10 that you are receiving now.

There are also npk*.bundle files within the Machintosh HD/Library/Internet Plugins/ directory you could remove as well.

Lenny

When you have run the upgrade and someone tries to initiate a KLC session to an agent that hasn´t been upgraded will that single agent do an upgrade and later initiate the session that the user has started?

One more question.

"The very first KLC connection after you update the agent will be slightly longer, but those after will be much faster."

Will this be solved if I run the "Deploy Live Connect" procedure?

The new functionality from the Update Agent page does the same thing that the "Deploy Live Connect" procedure does.  The nice thing about it now, is that there is visibility as to which agent machines have the latest KLC files on each of the Machines (with agents).  So if you update the agent to the latest version (currently 6.2.0.0 - 1.2.0.22), there is no need to run the "Deploy Live Connect" procedure.

If you don't update your agent and attempt to Live Connect, the connection time will be delayed in order to update the agent.  Once that is complete, your connection times will improve.

With that said, we recommend that you update your agents from the Update Agent page.

see response below....

YEA - i tested this fix and i see much better performance, in some cases we have the connection time dropping with 50% (customers with good DSL connenctions sometimes connect within 2 seconds. really slow DSL connections too about 10seconds and our now down to approx 7 seconds).

So with the agent version now showing as 6.2.0.0 - 1.2.0.22 on the Update Agent page, what's the best way to filter for agents needing an update?

I'm assuming that you would filter the Agent Ver by NOT 602 and "Contains LiveConnect.exe < 10200022", but I haven't been able to make it work yet...

Any advice?

I've been quite critical of Live Connect on this forum but this latest update after you have connected the first time is much quicker and a big improvement when connecting, however I still feel we are missing two really important key features of the old remote control before we fully switch over to using LC.

1. To be able to reduce colours, whilst I like to see the best possible screen, performance and speed is far more important and on slow connections our helpdesk team reduce the colours on the old VNC to make the screen respond faster so they can complete jobs much quicker.

2. To be able to copy and paste text into the LC remote session, having to type out IP addresses and text slows people down and it going backwards from the old remote control.

I'm sure these two key features are on the list to be added in but can Kaseya confirm if and when they will be released in LC please?

Thanks

I haven't tried the new KLC patch yet, but I agree with the sugeestion of copy and paste functionality.  That is the biggest reason I don't use KLC Desktop Access.

Is the agent update larger than usual after this update is installed?

When updating all agents, I will typically schedule the updates to take place on all agents over the course of a weekend staggered by the default one minute.  Would this plan cause a problem after this update is installed?

Thanks in advance.

I agree that this is important. It is a little thing, but seriously impacts a lot of our support issues.

Updating all agents as you have suggested is a fine idea.  Once you have updated the agent to 6.2.0.0 - 1.2.0.22 there is nothing else you need to do in order to have the latest KLC updates.

@jhardee

This ability currently isn't supported but I have added it to our feature list for the next version.

@Brendan Cosgrove Any possibility to get more info on if this will be included in the 6.3 update that was going to be released in January and if the 6.3 update is still going to be released in January?

First let me clarify that 6.3 was never going to be released in January, I'm not sure where you heard that but unfortunately it was erroneous.  This KLC update will most definitely will be included in the 6.3 update.

@Mike - Thanks for the info!  I won't waste time trying to make it work.  Somehow, though, there's got to be a way to query the Agent version plus KLC version... if there wasn't, the VSA wouldn't know how to make the "Force update even if agent is at version 6.2.0.0 - 1.2.0.22" option work.  I'll wait for 6.3 and just continue to roll out agent updates periodically for now.

@Brendan Cosgrove I'm not going to split hairs about the 6.3 release date, my main objective was to not waste time by doing 2 major updates in a month where the latter update would make the first redundant.

Thanks for the info.

I "suspect" that 6.3 might become 7.0 and be announced at the K conf in May... Think about it, do they really have time to put out an interm release and still get a new release ready for May 1? I would not think so. So if I were you HardKnox, plan in May as the next official release (my guess anyway!).

Remember, Kaseya may "announce" a release at the Conference, but it is rarely released to GA at that time.

@HardKnoX - No worries, just wanted to be super clear about that.  In terms of update, I wouldn't consider this KLC update major in terms of impact and change on the Kserver, so I would do this update ASAP.  You'll be glad you did from the first time your Desktop Access after updating your agents.

@RandySpangler - Always good to remember announcements are different than releases.  :)

The new version doesn't break the old agents, it just makes KLC work like it was always supposed to. The push out of the agent doesn't take that long either, unless you have a slow upload speed on your VSA's internet connection. We pushed a whole bunch out over the last weekend...

Like I said not going to split hairs or beat that old dead horse within regards to release dates.

The reason I'm classifying it as a major release is;

A) Its not part of the normal Kaseya update system (you have to download it separately and and install it at your own risk etc...)

B) It actually fixes (fingers crossed) KLC and that has to be a major something :D

If it helps, I applied the update whilst watching the screen through my fingers, happy to report it all went well.

Noticeable speed improvements for KLC.

hehehe...here's you watching the update:

Also, every time that I have ever done a dcpromo, that's me. 

We applied the udpate today. Installed without any problems. We updated a few agents, and noticed nice speed improvements for KLC. Loosk promising.  We;ll be updating agents this weekend.

Lloyd

We applied this yesterday and rolled out the update to all agents. We then updated the plug-in for everyone. My staff is super happy with the update and speed. The patch install went perfectly.

Thank you!

Time to load the LC connect window, see the thumbnail, and establish a remote control session seem to be much improved. Yeah !!!

One question/issue... when I close the LiveConnect window, by clicking the X in the top righthand corner of the browser window, my browser (Internet Explorer) seems to hang for about 10 seconds.  It just sits there, with the mouse icon doing the circle thing. Then it finally closes.  I have experienced this on multiple computers (different hosts, controlelr different agents).

In anyone else seeing that behavior when closing the LiveConnect window?  Any way to be able to close the LiveConnect window faster?

Lloyd

This update seems to be working great for us!