Automating Remote Update

Remote update makes it easy to push configuration changes and update EventSentry agents on remote computers since you are not required to install the software on the remote hosts manually. However, administering a large amounts of hosts, especially in a WAN environment, can be a time-consuming task.

To address this issue we created a command-line version of the Remote Update feature (eventsentry_upd.exe) which you can schedule to run automatically at desired intervals using the Windows Scheduler (e.g. once a day). The EventSentry Remote Update Utility offers the following features:

We recommend that you schedule the Remote Update Utility to run one or more times during the day (e.g. at night and in the morning), but you can also run it manually from the command-line. The Remote Update Utility consists of one file (eventsentry_upd.exe) and is installed into the EventSentry installation folder and supports the following command-line switches:

Scope (required)

/allgroups

Update computers in all groups.

/group:GROUPNAME

Update computers in the specified group.

Options

/log

Log results to the event log (details)

/skipunassigned

Do not transmit unassigned packages (see remote update options)

/installupdate

Ensures that:

•	The remote agent is updated to the latest version if it is out-of-date

•	The EventSentry agent is installed if it isn't already

•	The EventSentry agent is started if it is stopped

/repeatfailed

If a host is unreachable, remote update will store the host name in a temporary file and attempt to contact the host again when the utility is called the next time and the configuration has not changed in the meantime.

If the configuration did change, then the utility will talk to all hosts again regardless.

/usead

Use Active Directory: If you have ActiveDirectory-Enabled groups (more info), then you should activate this option. Remote Update will refresh the computer list from Active Directory and install the agent on computers that have been added to an OU or group.

Simply running eventsentry_upd.exe with a scope option (e.g. /allgroups) will push the latest configuration out to all hosts, but you can leverage the utility more by using some of the command-line options.

Example 2: Pushing the configuration to all hosts in the "Servers" group, logging the result and skipping unassigned packages:

Example 3: Pushing the configuration to all hosts, logging the result and also ensuring that the agents are up-to-date and running:

Example 4: Pushing the configuration to all hosts, logging the result, refreshing the computer list from ActiveDirectory and installing the agent on newly added computers: