Agentless V/S Agent Based Discovery
What is the right solution for discovering your assets ?
Both approaches have their benefits & challenges.
What is the right solution for discovering your assets ?
Both approaches have their benefits & challenges.
As the name suggests, an Agentless Network Scanning & Discovery tool is one that doesn’t require any agent or client installed on the end point to gather information about the IT Asset. An agentless asset management system remotely gathers all the data on your devices from a central tool that your technicians run on the server.
These tools typically collect data either by using management protocols or specifications like SNMP, WMI, WinRM, CIM, SSH or leveraging APIs provided by the target systems. Some tools use a combination of management protocols and APIs to obtain a complete hardware and software information across all assets.
Agent-based discovery places an “agent” on each discovery target. This software agent is a piece of code that runs on the target machine, and “calls home” (could be a central server) to report back its findings.
The agent, being local, is able to gather data and “store” it, delivering hours, days, weeks, or even months of data in large chunks if an when a connection does become available. Data can be transported on a more regular, scheduled basis if desired.
Euladox ITAM provides for both methods of discovery:
The preferred, or generally recommended, method by Euladox ITAM is the Agentless Discovery. But customers can use either of the two or a combination of the two methods depending on their specific needs.
The decision criteria for using agent or agentless discovery are:
Agent-based discovery is ideal for situations where you suffer from network quality or availability issues because these solutions are less dependent on the network. They are also good for discovering endpoints that may sometimes be disconnected from the corporate network.
Secondly, depth of data is an important criterion. In case you are interested in collecting information about certain BIOS foot prints (example : number of keystrokes or mouse clicks) then agent based discovery is the way to go.
The Euladox ITAM Discovery Satellite is the most modern agent-less inventory discovery system for IT Assets. It uses the multiple standard protocols for conducting discovery:
Euladox Discovery Satellite has specialized adaptors for