CloudConnect Manual

Mass-Deploying CloudConnect Agents

In some situations, you may wish to deploy CloudConnect Agents to a large number of remote devices using an installation manager instead of manually creating and deploying Agents individually. These steps will help speed up the process.

Create a new Agent and download the installer

• Begin by creating an Agent in the CloudConnect Portal as normal by clicking New Agent on the Agents card.

  Important!

  Do not delete this Agent, or you will be unable to use its configuration link ID to deploy on multiple machines.

• Select the newly-created Agent, click the Download link, and download the Agent installer executable.

This pre-configured installer contains the appropriate configuration IDs and commands for use with most installation management systems. However, if necessary, it is possible to manually extract the .MSI file from the installer and incorporate your Agent's configuration ID.

The easy way — Deploy CloudConnect using the Agent installer executable

• Distribute the Agent installer to every device you wish to monitor with CloudConnect.

• On the remote devices, have your installation management system launch the .EXE installer quietly by using the following command:

  [installer directory]/pingplotter_installer.exe /quiet

  This will automate the .MSI extraction and configuration ID insertion covered below (the hard way).

• Alternatively, you can open CMD with Administrator privileges, change the current directory to the location of the executable, and run the installer using the command above.

The installer should install the Agent silently. The new Agent should now also appear in the CloudConnect Portal. At this point, if you've pushed this installer to multiple machines, multiple Agents should now be listed in the CloudConnect Portal with the same name. However, if you expand the Agents in your Cloudconnect Portal, you can view the device name associated with each Agent. At any time, you may rename your newly-deployed Agents for easier management.

The hard way — Install CloudConnect Agents using an extracted .MSI

In some cases, you may find it useful to deploy agents using an .MSI file.

• In addition to the installer, you will need to copy the configuration link ID for the Agent you created. This can be found within the download link URL you used previously to download the Agent. The URL should look like this:

  https://www.pingman.com/account/getagent/?configLinkID=[CONFIGURATION LINK ID]

  Make sure you copy only the configuration link ID (everything after the = sign), not the rest of the URL.

• Open CMD with Administrator privileges

• Extract the .MSI from the Agent installer .EXE using the following command:

  [installer directory]\pingplotter_installer.exe /extract="[dstination directory]\pppro.msi"

• If possible, validate your extracted .MSI file by using it to install an Agent on a test machine.

• From here, you can distribute the extracted .MSI file to every device you wish to monitor with CloudConnect. On the remote devices, open CMD and change the current directory to the location of the .MSI file.

• Install the .MSI quietly by using the following command, inserting your configuration link ID:

  msiexec /i pppro.msi /quiet INSTALL_AGENT=1 PM_SERVICE=1 CLIENTCONFIGLINK="[CONFIGURATION LINK ID]"

  For example:

  msiexec /i pppro.msi /quiet INSTALL_AGENT=1 PM_SERVICE=1 CLIENTCONFIGLINK="irhfjys75iufjsyeh5n39fhtnslrofje"

The installer should install the Agent silently. The new Agent should now also appear in the CloudConnect Portal. At this point, if you've pushed this to multiple machines, multiple Agents should now appear with the same name. However, if you expand the Agents in your Cloudconnect Portal, you can view the device name associated with each Agent. At any time, you may rename your newly-deployed Agents for easier management.