Agent Administration
Philippe JASPARD
Presentation
The Agent administration menu is used to manage the agents' configurations, the agents' updates, and the Tags' values.
Agent Configuration
The Agent Configuration command is used to set the way the agents are communicating with the server on LAN only
Please refer to the communication ports used by proVconnect in the proVconnect Networking information page
Synchronisation port is the TCP port used by the agent to synchronise with the server - It is the port used by the pulse. Note that in case you allow synchronisation, the pulse is not really necessary anymore as the server will contact the agent as soon as a task is planned.
Dicovery port is the TCP port the server is using to discover agents on the LAN.Â
Enable DHCP Scope is used when the agents are deployed prior to knowing what the server DNS address will be. in this case, the DNS name of the server can be sent to the agent through DHCP scope. as soon as the agent is online for the first time, it will interogate the DHCP server to know the proVconnect DNS name. once the agent has collected the DNS name of its proVconnect server, then the DHCP scope option will be deactivated. Please refer to the DCHP scope option configuration.
Randomize the sending of inventory over (seconds) is used to set the time XXXXXXXXX
Update Inventory at each agent startup is used to set to refresh the inventory on the server at each startup of the client
File Transfer Configuration
The File Transfer Configuration command is used to set the communication parameters and data transfer speed limit between agents and between server and agents
The Distributed Transfer section is where you define the way agents are transfering data between each other. In fact, this feature optimizes the bandwidth consumption when large files are tranfered from the server to multiple agents on a remote LAN. When activated, this feature opens up a communication channel between agents so they can set in peer-to-peer mode and prevents sending the same file to each agent.
- Sharing port between agents: This is the port on which agents will communicate with each other on the same network
- Receive Speed Limit: This is the maximum speed (in kB/s) at which the agent will receive the file from the other agents on the same network
- Transmit Speed Limit:Â This is the maximum speed (in kB/s) at which the agent will send the file to the other agents on the same network
The direct Transfer section is where you define the way agents are transfering data to and from the proVconnect server.
- Receive Speed Limit: This is the maximum speed (in kB/s) at which the agent will receive the file from the server
- Transmit Speed Limit:Â This is the maximum speed (in kB/s) at which the agent will send the file to the server
Agent Update
The Agent update command is used to configure the way agents updates are programmed from the proVconnect server. Two options are available:
- Update from Library: This option is used when you have uploaded the agent update file in the Library and you want to use this file to update the selected agents
- Update from FTP server: This option is used when you want to use a remote FTP server to launch the agent updates. In this case, you need to configure the FTP server details in the FTP server settings menu below
FTP Server Settings
The FTP server Settings menu is when you configure the FTP server to us the FTP method for updating the agents
- Enable automatic FTP updates at startup: activate this option if you want the agent to check if an agent update is available on the FTP server. this check will be done at each boot of the device.
- Hostname or IP: This where you can indicate the DNS or the IP address of the FTP server
- Port: This is where you indicate the port number for the FTP connection
- Path: This is the path where the agent update is located on the FTP server
- Login: This is the user login used to authenticate on the FTP server
- Password: This is the password associate to the Login used to authenticate on the FTP server
Inventory Tags
Inventory Tags are custom values you can use to group your devices according to values that are not present by default in the dynamic groups values (please refer to the working with static and dynamic tags page)
- Tags 1 to 5: These are static (fixed) values that you can use to identify your devices. Values on such tags could be the name of the city, the department or the GPS location where the device is deployed or it could be any other data that is relevant to your infrastructure.
- Tags Auto 1 to 5 Shell Command: These are dynamic tags that will return the result of a command. Commands in such tags, can be standard shell commands but also WMI commands or even powershell scripts. These dynamic tags will allow you to group your devices by the result of the command. Â
Note that you can also display the values in the static or dynamic thags on the main device list by adding the selected tag column in the main vue (see the Device List Settings page for this). For exaple, you could for example, display the user's session's name in one of a column in the main device list.
Note that you need to click on the box next to the tag value for the tags that need to be updated. Any box left empty will NOT update the tag value
Note
the Friendly Name field allows you to give a specific name for the command so you can find it easily