The Uptrends Infra agent can be installed manually on any supported Windows server or workstation. However, you might prefer to install the agent remotely, using a Group Policy in Active Directory. In this article we describe how you can set up such an automated install.
Note that we have two agent versions available:
- Uptrends Infra agent 1.x, the latest official release of the agent
- Uptrends Infra agent 2.0 (beta), the beta release of the newest agent
There are differences between the two versions for the Active Directory install. The differences are noted in this article where applicable.
Prerequisites
Uptrends Infra agent 1.x
The .NET Framework 4.0 (or higher) must be present on the agent machine. The automated install will fail if this prerequisite is not met.
Uptrends Infra agent 2.0 (beta)
Nothing needs to be pre-installed. The Infra agent 2.0 (beta) is based on .NET Core, which makes it independent of the installation of the .NET Framework.
Installing the MSI package
The first step is to download the MSI package containing the agent setup. For the download link to the latest version check out the page Uptrends Infra agent for Windows. You should make this MSI package available in a network share within your company’s network.
Then you can define a new Group Policy within your Active Directory. We recommend that you use machines, rather than users, for the security filtering. As the agent runs as a Windows Service, no user will be required to log in to the applicable server at all.
You can now register the MSI package within the Group Policy (Computer Configuration > Policies > Software Settings > Software installation). The default settings are fine. This process is well-documented, e.g. in the Microsoft article Use Group Policy to remotely install software. Please refer to that document for more insight.
Registering the agent
After the installation, you need to register the agent in order to run properly. This cannot be done remotely and has to be done on the machine where the agent has been installed. This means providing an Uptrends Infra account, to which the agent will be connected.
The registration process can be executed interactively by starting the executable program.
- Infra agent 1.x:
%programfiles(86)%\UptrendsInfra Agent\Uptrends.Infra.RegisterAgent.exe - Infra agent 2.0 (beta):
%ProgramFiles%\Uptrends Infra Agent\RegisterAgent\Uptrends.Infra.RegisterAgent.exe"
Alternatively, you can open a CMD shell or PowerShell and run the executable from there. In that case you provide the account information in the command line by adding the username and password as parameters, e.g. Uptrends.Infra.RegisterAgent.exe myusername@example.com mypassword.
This command can also be scripted using a batch file or PowerShell script.