If you are like me who have on-premise AirWatch infrastructure, chances are you are somewhat responsible for the basic upkeep of the servers such as applying Windows patches. Hopefully, your servers are virtualized and that you back up the virtual machines with snapshots prior to applying any sort of update including Java.

As it turns out, however, we are not supposed to update Java manually at all! Otherwise, you may experience an issue with AirWatch Tunnel Proxy service not starting properly.

This has been a complaint among AirWatch administrators for quite some time. Until feature request PPAT-105 is implemented in the future release, I was only able to resolve this issue after updating Java manually by:

1. Un-install AirWatch Tunnel from Programs and Features
2. Re-boot server
3. Re-install AirWatch Tunnel component (download it from AirWatch console)

Before taking the steps above, I did follow the steps outlined per the AirWatch KB below. However, I was not able to resolve the issue on hand.

How to update the Java version on the Tunnel Proxy

When you update Java, it updates the environment variables within Systems Properties.

However, it does not update the wrapper.java.command properly. This prevents the AirWatch Tunnel Proxy service from starting.

After un-installing/restarting/re-installing AirWatch Tunnel, wrapper.java.command is updated. You should then be able to start the AirWatch Tunnel Proxy service.

Per AirWatch technical support, it is best to turn off Java update whenever possible.