Search SolarWinds Support

Search Within:

Quick Links

SolarWinds Platform Port Requirements SolarWinds/Orion Platform Documentation SolarWinds/Orion Platform Release Notes Hybrid Cloud Observability Documentation Hybrid Cloud Observability Release Notes

News & Announcements

Evolving towards Observability Secure by Design Meet our Product Trainers THWACKcamp 2022 On-Demand

Connect with Us

Technical Documentation Customer Portal Submit a Ticket THWACK Community Orange Matter Blog TechPod Episodes
Documentation forSolarWinds Service Desk

Agent installation for Windows

On this page

Introduction

The Discovery Agent runs as a service.

Use the information in the following sections to install the Discovery Agent on a single Windows computer. After you complete the deployment and setup procedures on one computer, you can perform a mass deployment to install the agent on host devices throughout your organization.

Navigation

Setup > Discovery & Assets > Installation.

Prerequisites

Ensure that the following prerequisite requirements are met before installing.

Supported platforms

The Discovery Agent is supported on the following platforms:

  • Windows 7.x
  • Windows 8.x
  • Windows 10

SolarWinds supports the following Windows Server operating systems:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (October 2009)
  • Windows Server 2012 (September 2012)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (October 2013)
  • Windows Server 2016 (September 2016)
  • Windows Server 2019 (October 2018)
Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 are not supported.

Firewall requirements

The following domains and ports must be allowed.

Purpose Destination IP TCP/UDP Destination Port Protocol
Report asset data to the SWSD platform

agt.samanage.com

+ agteu.samanage.com
(EU accounts only)

TCP 443 HTTPS
Obtain the external IP address for monitored devices opendns.com UDP 53 DNS

Group policy requirements

Be aware that if your IT organization has a group policy that would restrict an application being installed from automatically creating itself as an NT service. If such a group policy exists, your IT organization needs to allow the NT SERVICE/SamanageAgent to run as a service.

If the agent is not allowed to run as a service, the installation can fail. If the agent does install but is not allowed to run as a service, it will not report back.

Installation

The first step in the installation process is to download the Discovery Agent. After downloading, you have the following options for installing it on a single computer:

  • Run the Discovery Agent Setup wizard.

  • Perform a silent installation using a command line.

You can deploy the discovery agent on Windows and macOS devices. If you prefer to push the agent using Microsoft InTune and an MSI file, see Deploy with Microsoft Intune.

Download the agent setup for Windows

  1. Navigate to Setup > Discovery & Assets > Installation.

  2. Download the Discovery Agent setup file and save it to your local computer.

Run the Discovery Agent Setup wizard

  1. Review the installation prerequisites and employ all required corporate security measures in your deployment.

  2. Launch the Discovery Agent wizard.

  3. At the Welcome message, click Next to begin.

  4. If you agree with the license agreement, select I accept the agreement, and then click Next.

  5. In the Ready to Install dialog, click Next.

  6. When prompted, click Finish to complete the installation.

    When the installation is complete, the Discovery Agent runs an inventory scan for the first time. This may take several minutes to complete.

    The agent then begins reporting on the preconfigured parameters (for example, hardware and software). It may take a few moments for the information to appear in your SWSD instance.

Perform silent installation using a command line

If you want to install the Discovery Agent using a Windows command line, perform the following steps:

  1. Open Terminal.

  2. Navigate to the Download folder.

  3. Execute the installer with the mode unattended and proxy command line arguments.

    "<folder>\Solarwinds_Discovery_Agent_<version>_installer.exe" --mode unattended
--enable_proxy 1 --proxy_address [address] --proxy_port [port] --proxy_username [username] --proxy_password [password]

    Replace [address], [port], [username], [password] with the appropriate information based on the related proxy.

    Be aware that SWSD cannot pick proxy settings automatically. Proxy settings are saved to the configuration file and are used for agent communication.
Running the installer as an administrator is not required. However, you will be prompted to run the installation as an administrator. When you run an admin-enabled command window, a command prompt is not required.

Uninstall the Discovery Agent

To uninstall the Discovery Agent, go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Uninstall a program. Select the agent and complete the uninstall procedure.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Solarwinds Discovery Agent\uninstall.exe"

For silent uninstall use: 

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Solarwinds Discovery Agent\uninstall.exe" --mode unattended

Force an inventory refresh for the Discovery Agent

After you enable the Discovery Agent, the agent inventory automatically updates every 24 hours. The agent runs as a Windows service and triggers a refresh based on that schedule.

To optimize for outbound bandwidth utilization, the agents randomize the next inventory refresh within a 24-hour timeframe. This process prevents all agents from reporting at the same time.

Optionally, you can force the agent on a targeted machine to manually push an update. To push the update, open a Command Prompt window and run the following commands or copy the code into the prompt. If the prompt does not return an error message, the procedure completed successfully.

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Solarwinds Discovery Agent\agent\ruby\bin\ruby.exe" "c:\Program Files (x86)\Solarwinds Discovery Agent\agent\src\mini_kernel\cmd.rb" -f

Related topics