There are many reasons that a Package Server is unresponsive and not serving up packages to agents in a site. When this happens, we see the agent downloading packages from the Notification Server instead of from the Package Server.
By default the Agents will attempt to download the package from the local Package Server for 4 hours (240 minutes), and if it still fails it will then download the package from the Notification Server.
Attempts to download a package from its assigned package server keeps failing for more than 240 minutes. It falls back to download the package from Symantec Management Platform (SMP) as a safeguard to be sure that the package is delivered at the end to the client. Clients will download the package from the SMP server IF they fail to get it from their package server.
This behavior is intended to assure that clients get packages when they fail to download it from their assigned package server for a period of time (240 minutes).
When AgentPackageDownloadFromLocalPSOnly is 0: agents can download from the NS, IF their Package Server is not available.
When AgentPackageDownloadFromLocalPSOnly is 1: agents will not fail over to the NS, and must get the package from the Package Server assigned to the Site, even if no Package Server is assigned.
1) Changing the Core Setting "AgentPackageDownloadFromLocalPSOnly" from 0 to 1 will make agents always download from the Local PS, with no fail over. This not recommended in most environments.
2) The recommended way is to increase the value of MaxAgentDownloadTryingTimeMins. This will allow the PS more time to get the packages.
To make any changes to these values: