We are creating new beacons and decommission old ones that means we need to change the configuration on each server where to pick up the policy. Can we make this change centrally without changing this on each server itself?
There have been many discussion on running multiple beacons in parallel for a period of time as well as leveraging DNS to be able to change the underlying beacon server to another server. Also the Gathering FlexNet Inventory can be a valid reference.
When you commission a new beacon and create the beacon entry, all agents will receive an updated fail over list, which will contain the new beacon, this is not valid only in case you are using groups that are assigned to a specific beacon.
So you can keep some time the old beacon on line, so that all the servers will receive the new policy. After that you can stop the old beacon, and check if you have some left overs, devices that are no longer reporting.
This is better suited at the implementation phase, but can be implemented and afterwards, you instruct the beacon to publish the dns alias, you keep both beacon on line, so that all devices will receive the new policy with the dns alias, and configure the DNS server to point to the new beacon, also after that you need to modify the new beacon to be published with DNS alias, if you are using SSL (port 443) you need to take extra care with certificates to configure them properly.
Also don't forget to update all your deployment packages with the new beacon server 🙂
