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Azure Arc Blog
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Public Preview: Auto agent upgrade for Azure Arc-enabled servers

Aurnov_Chattopadhyay's avatar
Aurnov_Chattopadhyay
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Aug 12, 2025

Seamlessly keep the Azure Connected Machine agent up to date for the latest server management capabilities and fixes

We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Auto Agent Upgrade for Azure Arc-enabled servers. This feature is a major leap forward in simplifying agent lifecycle management across hybrid environments. Once enabled, your Connected Machine agents will automatically upgrade to the latest supported version without requiring manual intervention or scripting. 

Benefits of staying on the latest version of the Azure Connected Machine agent include:

  • Access to the newest server management capabilities 
  • Reliability and quality from any bug fixes and agent improvements 
  • Compliance by getting the latest security fixes and enhancements 

Auto Agent Upgrade is built into the Connected Machine agent and can be enabled via Azure CLI or PowerShell by setting the enableAutomaticUpgrade property to true. Once opted in, your agents will be upgraded within one version of the latest release, with rollout batches designed to maintain stability across regions. You can view upgrade status directly in the Azure Portal under the agentUpgrade property. Note that this feature is only available on agents running version 1.48 or greater.

One of the key scenarios is using Auto Agent Upgrade to reduce operational risk and improve consistency across your hybrid estate without the overhead of manual patching. Whether you're managing servers in Azure, on-premises, across other public clouds, or at the edge, this feature ensures you stay on the most current Azure Connected Machine agent version without disrupting your workloads. 

To get started with Auto Agent Upgrade on Azure Arc-enabled servers, learn more at Manage and maintain the Azure Connected Machine agent - Azure Arc | Microsoft Learn.

Updated Aug 18, 2025
Version 2.0
azure arc
hybrid
multicloud
servers
unified operations
update

16 Comments

  • Mathieu_FR's avatar
    Mathieu_FR
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Sep 24, 2025

    Great news!

    What is the source and mechanism for the Auto Agent Upgrade downloads?

    For example, if a customer has more than 5,000 agents deployed, from where will the updates be downloaded and how will the process be handled at scale?

     

  • Lennart_DE's avatar
    Lennart_DE
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 18, 2025

    I have been testing this feature for my clients. After waiting for a few weeks now, for an automatic update, I tried to trigger the underlying scheduled task script manually.

    The Script stops after a few seconds because there is no value set in automaticupgrade.desiredversion. If I look up the value manually, it is not set.
    How does this value get set? What triggers an update of that value?
    Would appreciate if somebody in the tech community would give me some guidance.

    • nd4ever's avatar
      nd4ever
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Sep 18, 2025

      What version of the agent is currently on the server?  It has to be at least 1.48 for the script to work and set the value (reference above).  I ran into an issue with the script running but not setting the desired value and found that it was due to the server being on a version of the agent that was lower than 1.48.  If the script runs successful this is what you should see in the json properties of the Arc server.

              "agentUpgrade": {
                  "enableAutomaticUpgrade": true,
                  "desiredVersion": "1.55"
              },

      • Lennart_DE's avatar
        Lennart_DE
        Copper Contributor
        Sep 18, 2025

        The current Version is 1.53. For setup, I followed the Microsoft Learn article mentioned above. If I look up the values of the Server in Azure Powershell, I get the following:


        "agentUpgrade": {
                           "enableAutomaticUpgrade": true
                         },

        That is also the value set in the Microsoft Learn article. I mean, I don't want to set it to 1.55 because then it would not upgrade to the latest version in the future. Can "desiredVersion" also be set to "desiredVersion": "auto"?

  • Jeroen_Monnens's avatar
    Jeroen_Monnens
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 22, 2025

    We've been testing the new Auto Agent Upgrade feature for Azure Arc-enabled servers as part of the public preview. After enabling the enableAutomaticUpgrade property on a few servers, we noticed that the scheduled task responsible for the upgrade runs nightly but completes within seconds, and the agent version remains unchanged.

    Interestingly, when we manually trigger the scheduled task or run the underlying script directly, the agent updates successfully.

    This behavior suggests that the automatic upgrade mechanism might not be functioning as expected in some scenarios. Is this a known issue with the preview release, or are there specific conditions under which the upgrade is skipped?

    Would appreciate any insights or guidance from the product team or community.

    • justinchen's avatar
      justinchen
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Aug 22, 2025

      That’s interesting. There shouldn’t be a difference between running the scheduled task manually and it running on its own. What agent version was the machine running on prior to the successful upgrade? Is this a Windows machine? What does the "Last Run Result" and "Last Run Time" say in Task Scheduler?

      • Sharan's avatar
        Sharan
        Copper Contributor
        Aug 29, 2025

        This is very likely the "Internet Explorer - First Run" issue with PowerShell. Since the task is executing under SYSTEM privileges and basic parsing is not used in PowerShell when downloading the agent, it fails to execute completely. 

        Executing the same command defined in the scheduled task as an administrator will work without issues.