Configuring Intel vPro Agent Presence settings

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:

To edit the Intel vPro Agent Presence configuration
  1. Click Configure > Intel vPro options > Agent Presence.
  2. To disable Agent Presence monitoring on Intel vPro devices, clear the Enable Agent Presence monitoring check box.
  3. To disable monitoring for a specific agent, clear the check box next to the agent name.

    Even if both these check boxes are cleared, Agent Presence will continue to monitor its own monitoring process as long as it is enabled.
  4. Type a new value in the Heartbeat text box to change the maximum allowed time between heartbeats (minimum 30 seconds).
  5. Type a new value in the Startup text box to change the maximum allowed time for the agent to send its first heartbeat after the operating system starts on the device (minimum 30 seconds; 120 seconds is recommended).