After watching the remote push of many BE RAWS installations/updates, it seems to me that a large part of updating an agent ends up being redundant (and probably mostly unused) files such as .net installation packages (At least .net 2 and .net 3.5) and previously installed hotfix/service pack files. (I'm sure - in addition to that - there are quite a number of other files that could be eliminated during an 'update only' install to further streamline the process.)
I believe that if the push installation were an 'update only' that a large portion of the base installation is not necessarily required to be included in the file-set being pushed over to the remote server, especially if the actual update is only a single (or more) .msp file. I'm not positive if the 'update' process is actually a complete uninstall/reinstall of the entire agent (which also seems a bit excessive to me), but if it is not, then I don't understand why previously installed and prerequisite components (such as .net modules which may very well have been obsoleted by microsoft .net updates) are still being pushed to the remote server before the RAWS update installation begins.
I would surmise that an agent update deployment could very well be accomplished with a smaller, light-weight update package that only replaces necessary files, instead of pushing the entire base install + hotfix .msp files (previous and current) back up to every remote server (Which can be painful over a slow WAN link). This would of course, require that the push process detect the current RAWS patch level (which it already does) and then isolate only the files required to patch that installation.
File deltas are nothing new to Symantec, the SEP platform uses deltas for updating files such as definition packages, why can't the BE group also use the same file delta methodolgy for patching RAWS? I'd like to see agent updates take less than 8 hours to push installation files to remote servers over the WAN...
Suggestion: Smaller, light-weight installation packages for 'update only' agent installations.