The installation might need to be updated after application of updates at the server. Server updates can include updates to the agent packages and are applied to the server so that they can be distributed and applied. The installation might need to be upgraded when those updates are a new release.
There are three ways of updating the installation. The first is to distribute the packages individually; the remaining two involve applying an updated bootstrap package when using the Default Layout or manually transferring the files when using the Flat Directory Layout. Additionally, you can upgrade from the Flat Directory Layout to a Default Layout.
From 8.1 Fix Pack E or later, the Windows 32-bit bootstrap package has been replaced with a Windows 64-bit bootstrap package. Existing 32-bit agents and currently deployed extensions will continue to work. However, you can no longer deploy any packages using the Package Distributions tab of the Monitor Console to those agents due to incompatibility with newer packages. At some point, your Windows 32-bit agent will need to be upgraded to the 64-bit agent.
As with all agent Fix Packs and agent platforms, it is recommended you update the bootstrap package prior to updating any extensions. Note that when following the update steps you should preserve the eaa.xml and other files so you retain your current configuration. For more details, see Updating-the-Default-Layout-installation-by-applying-a-bootstrap-package.
Whenever a new Windows bootstrap package is installed or updated after application of a Fix Pack you may need to update the Microsoft runtime libraries. There is no harm in executing the installer if the runtime libraries are already installed. BMC recommends you execute both vcredist_x64 and vcredist_x86, although the 32-bit libraries installed by vcredist_x86 are only required by BTM extensions.
IMPORTANT: When updating your agent installation, you should review the upgrade steps as they have been altered to accommodate the changes in JRE implementations. For example, you should never extract the bootstrap archive over the top of an existing installation. This is especially important with the JRE changes as the result would be a non-working JRE. You should make a copy of the existing installation, extract it into a new directory and then copy/restore the required files, such as eaa.xml. Note that this is also applicable to the bmmtm-agent directory.