Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Manual Agent Installation Guide

  • Article

This document provides basic information about manually installing Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 agents. This document is not a comprehensive guide, for more information, see the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Deployment Guide, chapter 4 “Discovering Computers and Deploying MOM Agents.”

Note

This guide does not cover information specific to the MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition.

It is recommended that you also review the key concepts of MOM and your deployment design and planning documents. Areas to review include:

  • The MOM 2005 release notes to identify any changes that could affect planning for a new deployment or an upgrade from a previous version of MOM or a previous release of MOM 2005. The release notes are available on the MOM 2005 CD or from the setup.exe.

  • The Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Security Guide. This document provides detailed in formation about the security-related features and settings in MOM 2005 that can affect your deployment. This document is available from the MOM Web site.

  • The Microsoft Operations Manager 2005Supprted Configurations document, available on the MOM 2005 CD or from the setup.exe.

Deployment Limitations

MOM 2005 agents cannot be remotely installed or upgraded and must be manually installed or updated under the following circumstances:

  • The agent and Management Server are separated by a firewall.

  • The target computer is in an IPSec-enabled domain and the Management Server is in a non-IPSec-enabled domain. (See “Deploying Agents Across IPSec Boundaries”)

  • The agent is running MOM 2000 RTM (the agent must be either manually removed and a MOM 2005 agent installed, or the agent must be upgraded to a MOM 2000 SP1 agent before upgrading to a MOM 2005 agent).

MOM 2005 agents cannot be installed at all under these circumstances:

  • The agent cannot be installed on a computer running Windows NT® 4.0.

  • The agent cannot be installed on a Microsoft Cluster Services virtual server. You can install an agent on a physical node.

For more information about these limitations, see the MOM 2005 Supported Configurations Guide.

Reject New Manual Agent Installations

Before manually installing agents, you must first disable this setting. This setting tells the Management Servers to ignore any agents that are manually installed. This setting gives you greater control over your MOM environment by allowing you to determine when manually installed agents are allowed to communicate with the Management Server. You can re-enable this setting after installing all the agents, if you want to use this setting.

This setting is only effective if mutual authentication is enabled. Otherwise, MOM ignores this setting and new manually-installed agents will be accepted.

To disable the Reject new manually installed agents setting

  1. In the MOM 2005 Administrator console, navigate to Administration / Global Settings.

  2. Open the Management Server Properties.

  3. On the Agent Install tab, clear the Reject new manual agent installations check box.

  4. Right-click the Management Pack folder in the Administrator console and click Commit Configuration Change.

Note

Before you restart the MOM Service on the Management Server in the next step, use the Event Viewer under the Application Log on the Management Server to verify that Event ID 21241 appears. The description of Event ID 21241 is as follows: The MOM Server detected a change to the rules for one or more computers, and will begin downloading the new rules and configuration settings to the affected computers.

  1. After Event ID 21241 appears on the Management Server, restart the MOM Service on the Management Server. The MOM Service on all of the Management Servers in the management group must be restarted.

Installation Account

To install an agent manually, you must be logged on to the target computer as a local administrator. For more information about how to manually install agents, see the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Deployment Guide.

Management Server Port

This setting defines what port the agent will use to initiate communications with the Management Server. The default setting is TCP/UDP 1270 on new installation. If the agent is being installed beyond a firewall from the Management Server, this port must be opened in the firewall (incoming from the agent to the Management Server only) for the agent to communicate with the Management Server.

Agent Control Level

For manually-installed agents that are beyond a firewall from the Management Server, set the agent Control Level to None. When the Control Level is None , the following must be done manually:

  • Management Server will not try to automatically uninstall the agent.

  • Management Server will not put the agent into a pending uninstallation.

  • The user cannot use the Update Agent Settings task against these computers from the Administrator Console.

  • The user cannot upgrade these agents from the Administrator Console.

  • The user cannot uninstall these agents from the Administrator Console.

  • The agents will not be automatically marked for upgrade when the Management Server is upgraded.

  • The agents cannot have MOM product updates installed remotely from the Administrator Console.

Mutual Authentication

If mutual authentication is being used then you must choose Yes on the Active Directory Configuration page. If you select the other option, the agent will not be able to communicate with the Management Server. To use mutual authentication, the managed computer must either be in the same domain as the Management Server or their domains must have a two-way trust between them.

Install Agents Manually by Using the Agent Setup Wizard

The Agent Setup Wizard installs a MOM agent on the local computer and guides you through agent configuration.

To manually install an agent by using the Agent Setup Wizard

  1. Log on to the local computer by using an account with administrative credentials.

  2. Close any programs that are running.

  3. On the MOM 2005 product CD, double-click Setup.exe.

  4. On the MOM 2005 Setup Resources dialog box, click the Manual Agent Install tab, and then click Manually Install Microsoft Operations Manager Agent.

  5. Follow the steps in the Agent Setup Wizard to enter the agent configuration settings that you want to apply.

    Note

    If the Management Server is behind a firewall or is otherwise inaccessible when you run the Agent Setup Wizard, a message appears stating that it cannot contact the Management Server. However, this does not indicate a problem, especially if you have verified the Management Server information that you entered. Click Next to finish the wizard.

  6. After the Agent Setup Wizard steps are completed, you must approve the manual agent installation in the MOM Administrator console. In the MOM Administrator console, under Administration/Computers/Pending Actions, right-click the agent and select Approve to approve the agent installation.