Intel vPro (version 2.0 and later) includes an Agent Presence tool that can monitor the presence of software agents on managed devices. You can enable Agent Presence monitoring to ensure that management agents on your devices are continually running, and be alerted when an agent stops even when other, software-based, agents can't detect the problem.
LANDesk Management Suite uses Intel vPro Agent Presence to monitor two agents: the standard management agent and the monitoring service. It is useful in situations where normal monitoring communications are not available. For example, a device’s communication layer may not be functioning or the monitoring agent itself may have stopped running. By default, Agent Presence also monitors its own monitoring process so you are alerted if it has stopped running.
Agent Presence monitoring is done by configuring a timer that listens for “heartbeat” messages from management agents on the device, to verify that the agents are running. If a timer expires because it has not received a heartbeat message, Intel vPro sends an alert to the core server.
When you set up Agent Presence configuration, the agent on the device registers with Intel vPro to send the heartbeats directly to Intel vPro; if the heartbeats stop, Intel vPro can then alert the core server through out-of-band communication that the device agent is not responding. Intel vPro sends a platform event trap (PET) alert to the core server with a description of the changed state. By default, this alert is logged with device health. You can configure other alert actions to be initiated when this alert is received (for information about configuring alert actions, see Configuring alert rulesets).
When you configure Agent Presence monitoring, you can enable or disable monitoring for two agents and set the following values:
Heartbeat: The maximum amount of time (in seconds) that can pass between heartbeat signals. If this time limit is exceeded without a new heartbeat being received, the agent is considered to be not responding. The default value is 120 seconds for the standard management agent and 180 seconds for the monitoring service; the minimum value for both is 30 seconds.
Startup time: The maximum amount of time (in seconds) that can pass after the operating system starts before a heartbeat must be received from the agent. If this time limit is exceeded the agent is considered to be not responding. Agent Presence is configured on Intel vPro when the agent is installed, so this should allow for enough time for the agent to start running and send its first heartbeat. The default value is 360 seconds; the minimum value is 30 seconds.