How to deploy Snow Agents to every device?

ksungay asked a question.

October 27, 2017 at 7:00 AM

Hi community,

How does one install agents on to all machines in my company?

SCCM only works if it is installed on a device. But what if its not on every device? as is in our company.

How do we account for remote devices not on the network? We are a resources company, and some of our sites are not always on the network.

Here are my list of questions:

Is there a force deploy mechanism on Snow for machines that dont have SCCM?

How do i install Snow on devices not on local network?

in your experiences, how do companies account for this?

What is the benchmark that i know all/most devices have a Snow agent installed?

I see on SLM a tag called "#### Computers that are not inventoried" is this that amount?

what does this mean? If it is 0, then i have accounted for everything?

Another question, how do i know how many agents i have left until i need to purchase more?

I was told today by senior management that Snow told them that they can pick up more than what SCCM can...Something about Agentless etc. i am not sure. But the senior management has the expectation that we will be able to see most if not nearly all of the licensing environment in SLM because of Snow capabilities.

Regards

Khaleed

iankimble
9 years ago
Hi Khaleed, I hope the below will help you in your quest to get the agent deployed. Regarding the deployment of the agent onto all of your machines, your probably best off having a chat with your desktop and server team about how they can get the agent deployed for you as there are numerous methods. You've already mentioned SCCM but if something isn't running SCCM then it could be deployed via Group Policy, it could be scripted as part of a login script or scripts to copy and remotely execute the install on machines e.g. powershell, remote command or even potentially by your discovery tools (depending on what you have). Another alternative is that the install could be re-packaged up and then executed by the users themselves as you can script and wrap up admin rights within the one package. If in doubt ask them how would they roll out a critical software patch if required as the same method could be used for the agent. If the device is not on the network then this either needs a manual visit via an admin, a repackaged install (as above) provided to the user. However if the machine is not on the network how are the inventory files going to be collected? in this case you would probably best off executing the zero foot print agent via a usb and then the files can be collected for transfer later. If they have internet connectivity then the clients can transfer the files that way - you just need to work out the best way for the agent to be installed. worse case you could always get the users to download and copy the zerofootprint client onto the machine themselves and execute it - not ideal but gets the job done. Regarding your question on the benchmark then that is unfortunately up to you and your policy/process/company decision as to what % coverage you want to take a risk on or not account for in the event of an audit. An auditor could easily request that their audit tool is executed on each and every machine because you can only account for x% of coverage Computers not inventoried is what Snow can see in AD but doesn't have in the database. If this was zero it doesn't mean you have accounted for everything as what about computers not in AD e.g the ones off the network. You will need to apply some logic to this query as it will return extra accounts like cluster names etc. so on that basis from teh front screen it would never be zero. I have applied filters to the query when you drill into it to remove cluster names, templates etc to get a more relalistic picture. Also i would imagine your AD isn't 100% clean so there are probably some old entries in there that need a clean up Snow will warn you (warning section on the alerts) when you have less than 10% capacity left on your license limit - you can also just check how many computers you have in license manager yourself anyway on the list all computers. I think your last question is covered in the above, SCCM will only see what it has an agent on, snow will only see what it has an agent on, however if you can execute the agentless scan on those machines (or install the agent) you will have all of that data on those machines SCCM can't see. But where I think your question is aimed is that I wouldn't trust the data on SCCM for licensing and auditing purposes, this is where the snow tool will tell you more about what is actually installed as it picks up a lot more data about the software and installs than SCCM could. This is why deploying the snow agent is the best and more accurate way of auditing your estate hope that can help but let me know if you need more
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- ksungay
  9 years ago
  Hi Ian, Thank you so much for comprehensive answer. I just got a couple of questions on your response: The "copy the zerofootprint client onto the machine themselves and execute it", what is the zerofootprint client? An additional Snow agent? With regards to our remote computers, they have internet connection (all be it slow) but they not connected to our network. How will SLM pick up the license data? Or will it not? Is there a way to configure and collect Snow agent data to transfer data automatically to SLM? I thank you for your response, and it makes a lot of sense. I am just trying to limit the manual work for the agent deployment. Regards
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  - iankimble
    9 years ago
    Hi, The zerofootprint agent is just a different snow client - you can obtain this just by asking support. It's the same as what gets installed via the msi except it's just the files in a folder. I think you could probably just take a copy of the install folder from a normal client yourself For the remote computers then you will need to either have a snow inventory server available on the internet for them to be able to connect to, or you could just port forward the connection from your edge onto your internal server. you will just need to make sure that the external address is in the snow client.ini config (I beleive you can configure two addresses for the client to try, alternatively you could have your dns configured so the same address can be used internally as it can externally).
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Portal User
9 years ago
This does bring a question to mind regarding client and reporting percentage. What does everyone feel is adequate reporting from their client base? 90%, 80%, 100%? In larger Global environments you may never get to 100%. What number is satisfactory according to the industry on client reporting? The nirvana is of course 100% but can we get there? Thanks for allowing me to ramble.
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- iankimble
  9 years ago
  That's a tough one Mark and tbh I believe it will be purely down to any individual auditor at the point in time as to what they feel comfortable with (along with what your business deems acceptable for risk). If an auditor sees you are in full control and managing your estate, everything is checking out and your data is accurate, then they may well accept a lower % of the coverage on the client base, however they would want to ensure you understand what the missing data would look like to ensure you have accounted for it and may well ask for a spot check. I would have thought that in terms on devices permanently on the network then you should be able to achieve a coverage very close to 100%. As long as your processes are correct and reports in place to monitor any dependencies then this 'should' be easy to keep on top of. Mobile/laptop devices on the other hand will always be much harder however the same applies, ensure the processes are correct and the monitoring in place for the levels and just ensure you are able to account for the missing devices and data it may well take 12 months to full cover mobile devices but as long as there is a documented plan it shows you are in control
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