Increasingly, Argent customers are migrating to 64-bit platforms and computing environments

Many customers contact Argent and ask: “Does Argent Job Scheduler run on 64-bit Windows platforms?”

Answer: Yes

This help article discusses detailed topics and concerns that customers considering migrating to 64-bit Windows platforms should consider

Windows Server 2000 No Longer Supported

Microsoft has withdrawn support for Windows 2000 Server

All Argent customers should make immediate plans in the short-term to re-host applications and databases and migrate away from Windows 2000 Server platforms

Recommended Customer Action Item:

Plan to re-host all Windows 2000 Server platforms as soon as feasible, whether running Argent products or not

32-Bit vs 64-Bit Windows Socket Communications

Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine use Windows socket APIs to communicate with each other using TCP/IP socket technology

Argent has confirmed several reported instances in which Windows Server 200x R2 does not communicate smoothly with Windows Server 200x over standard socket connections

This affects Argent customers considering upgrading only part of their Argent Job Scheduler network to Windows 200x Server R2 (64-bit), i.e. mismatches between the central Job Scheduler server and satellite Argent Queue Engines

In all reported cases, resolution was achieved when the customer hosted both Argent Job Scheduler and all Argent Queue Engines on the same platform

Recommended Customer Action Item:

Customer should plan to re-host the central Job Scheduler server and all Argent Queue Engines to the same Windows platform during the same outage window

In cases where this is not feasible, please contact Argent Support to request guidance and assistance

32-Bit Windows XP Clients and 64-Bit Windows Servers

Argent has identified several Microsoft issues when 32-bit Windows XP clients communicate with 64-bit Windows servers

When 32-bit applications, including Argent’s products, are installed on 64-bit Windows platforms, Microsoft redirects Windows registry access requests to a sub-branch of the standard Windows registry called \Wow6432Node

Argent has developed code to address this Microsoft issue in recent releases of Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine

Recommended Customer Action Item:

Customers planning to continue using 32-bit Windows XP as a client platform to communicate with a central Job Scheduler server running on a 64-bit Windows platform may need to upgrade to a modern release of Argent Job Scheduler to avoid issues

Legacy Microsoft C Run-Time Issues

Argent has identified several Microsoft issues when legacy 32-bit Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine products are re-hosted on 64-bit platforms

The primary characteristic of the issues Argent has observed is that Microsoft does not support applications using legacy C language run-time code well

Argent has developed code to address this Microsoft issue in recent releases of Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine

Recommended Customer Action Item:

Customers currently running Argent Job Scheduler versions 7.x and earlier should strongly consider upgrading to a modern release of Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine to avoid issues

32-Bit Windows 7 Clients

Argent has identified several Microsoft issues when 32-bit Windows 7 clients attempt to establish ODBC connections to 64-bit database servers

Argent is preparing resolutions to address these issues

Recommended Customer Action Item:

Customer planning to install Argent Job Scheduler on 32-bit Windows 7 client machines should forestall those plans for now to avoid issues

Special Cases

Customers running the following versions of Argent Job Scheduler must contact Argent for assistance in migrating to 64-bit Windows platforms:

Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine 3.x (and earlier)

Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine 4.5 (and earlier)

Argent has prepared migration tools for our Field Engineering staff to use to facilitate these migrations

Licensing

All upgrade and migration paths supported by Argent preserve all existing license keys installed with Argent products

In some cases, additional licenses may be needed by customers that want to establish a test environment to evaluate and certify Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine prior to deployment in a production environment

Please contact Argent to discuss your unique requirements

Summary

Customers running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server should make plans as early as possible to migrate away from that platform

Argent customers running Job Scheduler version 3.x or 4.x must contact Argent for assistance prior to upgrading their Windows platforms

Argent customers running Job Scheduler version 7.x may need to upgrade their Windows platforms for many reasons, but should consider upgrading their Argent Job Scheduler version to 8.x (or later) before upgrading their Windows platforms to avoid issues

Wherever possible, customers should migrate to homogenous Windows platform environments for Argent Job Scheduler and Argent Queue Engine

This can avoid many issues with Microsoft socket communications between Windows 200x Server and Windows 200x Server R2