In the days of MOM 2005, there was a daily process to discover computers and deployment the MOM agent. This was configurable, but allowed MOM administrators to put discovery on auto-pilot, so to speak. How this works in current versions today depends on whether you are using Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM) or Essentials 2007 (SCE). In this post, I’ll briefly discuss how this process works, and how you can control its behavior.
Operations Manager 2007
Scheduled computer discovery and agent deployment is no longer a core features in Operations Manager 2007. The new Active Directory Integration feature is more or less a replacement for this. This leads to a problem if you do not have an agent embedded in your OS image, or if you have not otherwise configured an automated method (like ConfigMgr software deployment or AD Group Policy) to push the OpsMgr agent to new computers in the Active Directory.
However, through the OpsMgr Command Shell, we can work around this limitation by performing computer discovery and agent deployment on a schedule. I have already discussed this process and provided a fully functioning Powershell script in the following article:
Scheduled DIscovery and Agent Deployment in Large Environments for OpsMgr 2007
http://www.systemcentercentral.com/Details/tabid/147/IndexID/12981/Default.aspx
Essentials 2007
Scheduled computer discovery and agent deployment is controlled by a rule in System Center Essentials. It can be configured in the Feature Configuration Wizard when you first configure Essentials. However, it can also be configured and tuned by overriding the rule directly. The rule is targeted to the Root Management Server object class (Essentials is the RMS) and the rule name is Scheduled Agent Discovery and Installation. Simply enabling this rule (setting Enabled=true) will turn on a daily run of computer discovery and agent deployment.
However, the default values may not be what you want. If you look at the overridable parameters in this rule, you will see you can control the interval and time of day at which the process is carried out. This can be done through two additional
- IntervalSeconds - Controls how often the rule runs. This is 86400 seconds (1 day) by default.
- SyncTime - Controls the time of day during which the rule runs. This is 1am by default. If computers are not running overnight, you may want to adjust this value so agent installation can be carried out successfully.
Adjust these overrides to control how often and at what time of day computer discovery and agent installation occur. However, be use caution when changing these values, particularly how often discovery is carried out. There is generally not cause to lower this below the one day default.
Error Reporting
In both the OpsMgr Powershell scenario and the Essentials Scheduled Discovery and Install rule, you will find an alert is raised if agent deployment fails. If you check the Pending Management node of the Administration space in the Operations or Essentials console, you will also see the computers for which installation has failed.
Please leave questions as a comment on this post.