ENVIRONMENT
LANDESK Management Suite 9.6
DESCRIPTION
Agent Health is a new feature in LANDESK Management 9.6 and will allow you to do the following:
- Add or Remove one of the Agent's component without having to re deploy an agent or an update to the agent
- Ensure that your agent is properly installed and no files are missing or corrupted
- Repair your agent if a file is missing or corrupted
- Modify your components settings to meet the configuration you set in Agent Health
- Update your Agent files, components and settings if it is outdated
HOW IT WORKS
Agent Health is using the vulnerability scanner (vulscan) to check the following on a machine:
- Which components are installed
- How these components are configured
- Are they missing one or more file(s)
- Are the services running properly as required
- Are the files up to date
It will then compare this to the configuration you set in your agent health on the Core and adjust the settings accordingly on the clients.
VIDEO
Youtube version: LANDESK Agent Health - How to use
BASIC SETUP OF AGENT HEALTH
I. Download the latest updates for Agent Health
Go to Agent Settings and click on the update icon:
Then go to: Updates - Windows - Software Updates - Check LANDESK 9.6 Agent Health and click Download now
You should then see the following in your Patch and Compliance window:
(You can find the Agent Health definitions in View by Vendor - LANDesk Software)
These are the definitions for Agent Health, they contain scripts to either install or uninstall a component like Remote Control or XDD.
II. Create a Query and Scope in order to enable AutoFix on it
In our example, we will create a Query, then a Scope based on this Query.
We will only target our Windows 7 machines for this lab.
In your Network View - Queries - My Queries, New Query
Once your Scope is created, go to Patch and Compliance, into View by vendor, and look for LANDESK Software to find your definitions. You will have to set the AutoFix enabled on the Scope you created earlier for each of the definitions you will be using
Once done, you will only have to create and deploy your Agent Health Settings, then launch a Security Scan to have it applied to the machine.
SCENARIO: Install and/or Repair a component via Agent Health
In our example, we will install Remote Control to a machine that doesn't have it.
Go to Agent Settings - All Agent Settings - Agent Health - Right click and New
You will now set the configuration you want for this Agent Health Settings. In our case, we will add the Remote Control component.
I. Deploy your Agent Health settings
Once you have saved your Agent Health settings, you will have to deploy it. To do so, in Agent Settings - Create a task - Change settings
You will have to choose the Agent Health settings you created earlier, in our case: Agent Health - Install Remote Control
After your scheduled task is generated, apply it to the devices / groups / queries you would like, then start the task.
II. Apply your Agent Health settings using Vulscan
Once the task has completed successfully, you will have to run vulscan.exe through a Patch and Compliance Scan or a Security Scan from the machine for example.
When the scan is finished, and the autofix has been applied, you might then be able to see the changes:
You can then test that Remote Control is working on this client:
SCENARIO: Repair a component via Agent Health
If a third party software or a user deleted / modified the Agent files and/or folders, you would have had to troubleshoot until you realize that a file is missing and which one it is, uninstall then reinstall the agent.
This whole process might take at least 1 hour if everything is going perfectly, and could go up to many days if not.
With Agent Health, you will be able to check that your Agent is properly installed and functional. If not, then Vulscan will scan, detect, download and reinstall the missing files.
In our example, we cannot use the Inventory Scanner as the LDISCN32.EXE has been deleted:
I. Deploy your Agent Health settings
We set our Agent Health Settings to check our Base Agent and be sure that our Settings are the right ones (you can modify them as well with Agent Health), then we schedule it to push it to the device:
II. Apply your Agent Health settings using Vulscan
Once you have deployed your settings, and ensured that your Base Agent definition is configured to be AutoFix on a Scope that contains your targeted device, you can then launch a Security Scan on the machine:
After your Security Scan is done and you saw the Base Agent being fixed, you can try again to launch an Inventory Scan:
