Readying the Workgroup Environment

Before installing the Windows Probe and running a discovery make the following changes to ensure the client environment is ready for exploration. Once set, install the Probe on a workstation that will remain powered on, set to never Sleep, and on the network 24/7.

A probe installation is not necessary in a Workgroup however if not installing a probe, agents will need to be installed manually on each workstation. If installing the agents manually there is no need to follow the steps in Phases 3, 4, or 5.

There should be no changes necessary to your client’s hardware firewall to allow for monitoring. The N-Central agents and probes will be sending minimal traffic over ports 443 (HTTPS), 80 (HTTP) and 22 (SSH). These ports are usually readily available for outbound traffic in most environments.

The Windows Firewall on local devices will block communication from the N-Central Server and Windows Probe by default. This can be resolved by disabling the Windows Firewall on each device to be discovered by the Probe.

3rd party software firewalls (including anti-virus firewalls) should be disabled or configured similar to the Windows Firewall.

Without these changes a device may not be discovered, or may be discovered with a device class of “Other”. If a Windows device is discovered with the class “Other”, the probe will be unable to collect information such as the operating system, Windows service packs, hard disk space, and RAM. 

Create a new user account on each workstation in the environment. This account will be used to run the Windows Probe service, and will be used by Collabrance technicians to access workstations for support.

Service Account Criteria

Username: svcremoteadmin
Password: Choose a password that you’ll use for all of your subscriber’s workstations
Account Options: Password Never Expires
Member Of:  Administrators

If deploying a probe, log into the workstation you’ll be installing the probe on with the svcremoteadmin account.

Note: One must log into the probe workstation with the svcremoteadmin account at least once prior to installing the probe, or you will receive an error during installation.