Networking question on remote inventory data collection

russseeney6505 · 2013-08-10T22:23:31.000Z

We have around 10 or 15 clients located at maybe 20 remote sites. We have connections in to their sites through programs such as LogMeIn and some have VPN. Some are larger with 20 to 30 servers and desktops and some only have a couple of laptops and no servers.

We do not have VPN in to our site (Central Server) on a consistent basis. It is as needed. Depends on the client. I would like to either setup the remote sites as SW collectors or using the SW remote agent MSI option for the smaller clients and connect with https.

In some of the SW knowledge articles and SW white papers it says to use ports 9675 / 9676 with https. In other articles it says SW is not designed to work in the ‘public’ arena. I have our clients trained to send ticket anywhere emails and this seems to be working okay so not looking for help desk tickets. Just inventory. Would like network monitoring if possible but not critical as email alerts will work also.

If the remote collectors and agents can connect to our internal SW server is there an issue with security? Do the collectors and agents connect in and push the inventory to our site? Does the Central Server set a flag or something to tell or call or pull the data from the remote collector or agent then they go back to sleep and check back in 10 to 12 hours later?

Hopefully the question makes sense.
Mahalo.
Russ Seeney

joekwong · 2013-08-10T23:39:18.000Z

Russ776, Here is my experience I can share with you. in order for the remote collector to work, You need to either use port 80, 443 or 9675, 9676 as a pair. It all depends on how you initially setup your SW central server. Hopefully, it’s a dedicated system. The SW central server need to have these ports forward from your firewall. When you enable the remote collectors from the client side. Make sure you specify the ssl port to either 443 or 9676. Sometimes when you check back on your setup. SW will display 443 instead of 9676 (annoying even if you use 9676 all the time); since I use 9676. After you successfully made the connection to the central sw, performed a scan on the client side. Hint, You can adjust the scan time interval on the client side. On the central sw side, go into setting and create a ‘custom group’ and setup ‘group rules’ using Meta, site name to match the site name you specified on the client side in order to organize your devices. Hope this help.

russseeney6505 · 2013-08-11T02:15:19.000Z

Okay, thanks. I think that helps. Will give it a shot.

stevereeder4686 · 2013-08-11T11:25:34.000Z

But once the agent runs and collects the data, can you control when and how the data is sent to the SW central server?