Agent installation overview

This topic describes the possible approaches for installing multiple agents simultaneously. It also outlines the preliminary tasks required for agent installation.

Preliminary tasks for installing agents

1. If any of the target servers on which you plan to install agents are located behind a SOCKS proxy server, you must configure the routing of communication from the SOCKS proxy server to target servers, as described in Setting up communications with remote servers. This involves the main tasks of creating SOCKS proxy server objects and creating rules for routing to remote servers. See a sample setup in which target servers are located behind the SOCKS proxy server.
2. Add agentless devices to the system by:
   • Adding agentless devices individually. See Adding a server to the system.
   • Importing agentless devices. See Importing servers into the system.
     Both procedures give you the option of installing agents when you add or import the agentless devices. However, you cannot install agents until other prerequisites are complete.
3. Optionally, specify an alternative staging directory for agentless devices. See Defining alternative staging directories.
4. Add agent installers to the Depot as software packages. See Adding agent installer packages to the Depot.
   Agent installers must use a package type that is native to the target platform. For example, Red Hat servers requires RPM packages.
5. (Microsoft Windows) If you are installing agents on Windows servers, install PsExec on a server that can function as the PsExec server. See Setting up a PsExec server.
   
   Furthermore, for any target Windows server that is behind a SOCKS proxy server, ensure that the PsExec server is also behind the SOCKS proxy server. For more information, see Specifying or modifying information for remote host authentication.

Installing the agents

To install multiple agents, you can use either of the following approaches:

• Unified Agent Installer method: BMC recommends using the Unified Agent Installer as it simplifies the agent installation procedure and guides the user through creating the objects needed to install the agents. See Running the Unified Agent Installer.

• Manually create the objects needed to install agents: 
  To manually create the objects and install the agents, perform the following steps:
  
  1. Perform the tasks required to create the objects needed to install agents. See Creating objects for agent installation.
  2. Run the Agent Installer Job by scheduling the job or by running it immediately. See Agent Installer Job - Schedules.