Run Action Now - Persistent Connection

You can send commands to the Windows Monitoring Agent to perform actions outside of its schedule, for example Reboot device, rerun Checks, Install Patches and rerun the Patch Status Check

As you will generally wish to action these commands in near real-time, rather than wait on the next scheduled Agent upload cycle, Windows Agent 9 introduced a persistent outbound connection to our central servers over HTTPS facilitating the immediate execution of actions from Dashboard (where the device has an active connection).

Where a run now action is selected for multiple devices, pre-9 Agents process the command after the next scheduled upload cycle whilst those running Agent 9 or later will receive and action the commands almost immediately.

If Agent 9.0.0 RC or later is installed on a device, but cannot reach the persistent connection servers, the Agent will revert to the standard communication model.

Please note, the persistent connection mechanism does not affect the Agent Check cycle which continues to run based upon its existing schedule.

Tip, when enabling a feature use rerun Checks to initiate the installation process outside of the Check cycle.

Communication: Firewall Rules

In the majority of cases the Agent will connect to the servers without problem, but where firewall rules are in place restricting outbound HTTPS connections it may be necessary to permit access to the URL *.rbm.system-monitor.com

To ensure optimum performance, where the firewall supports Deep Packet Inspection we would suggest adding an access rule for our URLs.

Central Servers: Master and Node addresses

The persistent connection mechanism connects over HTTPS to one of three global region servers depending upon the Dashboard territory, with these designated Australia (anz), Europe (emea) and the United States (us).

The Agent first connects to the master server for its territory (region-master.rbm.system-monitor.com) this then provides the address for one of its nodes (region-node-Version-NodeNumber.rbm.system-monitor.com for example us-node-1-4-33.rbm.system-monitor.com).

Where the connection to this node fails, the master server is re-queried for an alternative node address and if connection to this alternative node fails, the Agent will retry the process at the next 24x7 upload cycle.

Type	Address
Master Format	region-master.rbm.system-monitor.com
Node Format	region-node-Version-NodeNumber.rbm.system-monitor.com
Node Example	us-node-1-4-33.rbm.system-monitor.com

Region	APAC
Dashboard Territory	Asia, Australia
Master	anz-master.rbm.system-monitor.com
Nodes	anz-node-Version-NodeNumber.rbm.system-monitor.com

Region	Europe
Dashboard Territory	Europe, France, France1, Germany, Ireland, Poland, United Kingdom
Master	emea-master.rbm.system-monitor.com
Nodes	emea-node-Version-NodeNumber.rbm.system-monitor.com

Region	United States, Americas
Dashboard Territory	United States, Americas
Master	us-master.rbm.system-monitor.com
Nodes	us-node-Version-NodeNumber.rbm.system-monitor.com

Connection Troubleshooting

Where the Agent cannot connect to the master server this is reported in debugrbm.log found in the Advanced Monitoring Agent installation folder (by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Advanced Monitoring Agent). For example:

dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm:ss: winagent(3564): CRBMConnectionManager::queryMasterServerForNodeServerDetails: error getting RBM Node Server details from master server

dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm:ss: winagent(3564): CRBMConnectionManager::runConnectorLoop: unable to retrieve node details from master server

To verify this error.

Log into the computer using the same user account as the Advanced Monitoring Agent Service
Open a browser
Attempt to navigate to the master server URL references in debugrbm.log

Success: the browser returns a blank page
Failure: the browser returns an error message