Use Agentless Monitoring

Applies To: Operations Manager 2007 R2, Operations Manager 2007 SP1

Microsoft Windows-based systems in which an agent cannot be installed can be managed without an agent. This is called agentless management.

Note

Not all management packs support agentless management, so make sure agentless management will serve your needs before using it. In particular, the Active Directory management pack and the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 management pack do not support agentless management.

Agentless management of computers is different from Agentless Exception Monitoring. Though they are similar in name, Agentless Exception Monitoring is used to aggregate, view, and report on error reports that are sent by the Windows Error Reporting service.

The Discovery Wizard can find and set up systems for agentless management. The process is almost the same as for deploying. You do, however, have to select a proxy for each agentless-managed system. A proxy is a system with an agent that is used to monitor an agentless system. A management group can serve as a proxy, but this takes up system resources. A best practice is using an agent-managed system as a proxy. This system must be set up for management before running the Discovery Wizard to establish agentless management.

Note

If a proxy is removed from management, its agentless systems are no longer managed.

Both the agentless-managed system and its proxy need to have access to the managing server through any firewalls. For more information about interacting with firewalls, see the Operations Manager 2007 Security Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=64017).

Note

When you are monitoring virtual servers on a cluster, you must deploy agents to the cluster nodes, configure them to be managed as a proxy and then monitor the virtual servers as you would monitor an agentless-managed computer.

To configure an agent-managed computer as a proxy for agentless-managed computers

  1. In the Agent Properties dialog box, click the Security tab.

  2. On the Security tab, select Allow this agent to act as a proxy and discover managed objects on other computers, and then click OK.

To discover Windows-based computers and configure Operations Manager 2007 to manage them as agentless-managed computers

  1. Log on to the Operations console with an account that is a member of the Operations Manager Administrators role for the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 management group.

  2. Click Administration.

  3. At the bottom of the navigation pane, click Discovery Wizard.

  4. On the Introduction page, click Next. The Introduction page will be skipped if the Computer and Device Management Wizard has been run before and Do not show this page again was selected.

  5. On the Auto or Advanced? page, do one of the following:

    1. Select either Automatic computer discovery or Advanced discovery. If you select Automatic computer discovery, click Next, and then go to step 6. If you select Advanced discovery, continue with the following steps.

      Note

      Automatic computer discovery scans for Windows-based computers in the domain where the root management server is installed. You can use advanced discovery to specify criteria for the computers the wizard will return, such as computer names starting with NY.

    2. In the Computer & Device Types list, select Servers & Clients, Servers Only, or Clients Only.

    3. In the Management Server list, click the management server or gateway server to discover the computers.

      Note

      For more information about gateway servers, see the Operations Manager 2007 Security Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=64017).

    4. If you selected Servers & Clients, you can select the Verify discovered computers can be contacted check box. This is likely to increase the success rate of agent deployment, but discovery can take longer.

    5. Click Next.

    Note

    The wizard can return approximately 4000 computers if Verify discovered computers can be contacted is selected, and it can return 10,000 computers if it is not selected. Automatic computer discovery verifies that discovered computers can be contacted. A computer that is already managed by the management group is not returned.

  6. On the Discovery Method page, you can locate the computers that you want to manage by either scanning or browsing Active Directory or by typing the computer names.

    If you want to scan, do the following:

    1. Select Scan Active Directory, if it is not already selected, and then click Configure.

    2. In the Find Computers dialog box, type the criteria that you want to use for discovering computers, and then click OK.

    3. In the Domain list, click the domain of the computers that you want to discover.

    If you want to browse Active Directory or type the computer names, do the following:

    • Select Browse for, or type-in computer names, click Browse, specify the names of the computers that you want to manage, and then click OK.

    • In the Browse for, or type-in computer names box, type the computer names, separated by a semi-colon, comma, or new line [ENTER].

  7. Click Next, and then on the Administrator Account page, do one of the following:

    • Select Use selected Management Server Action Account, if it is not already selected, and then click Discover.

    • Select Other user account, type the User name and Password, and then select the Domain from the list. If the user name is not a domain account, select This is a local computer account, not a domain account.

      Important

      The account must have administrative privileges on the targeted computers. If This is a local computer account, not a domain account is selected, the Management Server Action Account will be used to perform discovery. For more information about Operations Manager 2007 accounts, see the Operations Manager 2007 Security Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=64017).

  8. Click Discover to display the Discovery Progress page. The time it takes discovery to finish depends on many factors, such as the criteria that are specified and the configuration of the IT environment.

  9. On the Select Objects to Manage page, do the following:

    1. Select the computers you want to manage as agentless-managed computers.

    2. In the Management Mode list, click Agentless.

    3. Click Change, select the Proxy Agent that you want to use, click OK, and then click Next.

      Important

      An agentless-managed computer places greater resource requirements on the management server than an agent-managed computer. Therefore, an agent-managed computer that is configured as a proxy is recommended for managing agentless-managed computers.

  10. On the Summary page, click Finish. The computers will appear in the Agentless Managed node of the Administration pane in the Operations console, and they are ready to be managed.