User Forum

We are using the selfprovisioning approach to imaging/ reimaging the systems in our environment and for the technicians that are deploying the PCs they are normally imaging at one site with its own depot and then shipping the system to another site that has its own depot server locally. The newly imaged system is moved within the console from Configuration group A to configuration group B and the AGENTConfig.XML file updates itself with the new agent configuration for the new depot, however the environment variable will remain set to the original depot.

my question is this, when the agent checks in after being moved to Configuration group B what Depot server is it looking to? Is the agent checking into Depot Server A where it was imaged off of or into Depot Server B where it was relocated to and received the update agentconfig.xml file?

If the answer is that it still looks to Depot A how does one change that without repushing the agent? Connecitivity between our locations is a T1 and the amount of movement we have does not make pushes to this scale possible.

I suggest you use DHCP options to assign the depot server as described here:
http://helpfiles.matrix42-web.de/2013_E ... light=dhcp options

Thank you for the prompt response. We have tried the DHCP Options before during the initial implementation of Empirum and were not successful in getting it to work. From what we were told there were two settings to be made, one on the Agent Configuration by checking the option "use DHCP Options" and the other being the network layer configuration to set an option to an available/unassigned value (i.e. 149). We have read thru the documentation and unless we overlooked something the rest was for setting DHCP options for PXE.

Are the two steps mentioned above the only two items needing to be set or is there more?

There is still one step missing:
Assign the dhcp option numbers to the variable names like "EmpirumServer" in the PXE service configuration of DBUTIL.
From the debugview log running on the client you can tell if the client received and used a dhcp option.

Thank you, we will set that and try it again. I will post back after.

We were getting ready to set the option but was not clear if just the EmpirumServer option needed to be set or if EmpSRVlong, EmpinstPW,, EmpUser, EmpPW, and EmpInstUser are required as well. I was reviewing the help document for DHCP Options and came across this which I remember discussing with US Support before: "If a dedicated DHCP server (e.g., Windows DHCP Server) is used for transferring the DHCP options, we recommend that you do not configure the values via DBUtil."

We have several dedicated DHCP servers and Cisco Routers that manage our DHCP needs, because of this does this mean that the DBUTIL settings should not be applied and those option listed above need to set on the Routers and DHCP servers? If set on the Cisco Router then we would need to set each of the 6 options on the routers with the EmpirumServer option's value being that of the Depot Server at that particular location then correct?

This would then affect PXE imaging but what about agent interaction with the depots, would this then force the agent on a active windows PC to connect to DEPOTB even though the Environment Variable for EMPIRUMSERVER is set to DEPOTA?

I apologize for the multiple questions but I want to make sure I understand what is needed and that I am explaining the question properly.

Variable: Just the Empirumserver.

Only the VALUES will be set in the external DHCP server (e.g. Cisco).
The link between the option and the variable must be set in DBUtil. Just not the value.

PXE "imaging": You can also use those options for OS installation. But for now we only talked about sw deployment, right?
Let´s start with this first - then try to configure the ofter dhcp options as well.

BTW: A great tool to check at the client if the dhcp option did reach the client is this:
https://www.box.com/s/xcr4xy2smspi3ikl2tvp

Correct on the PXE question, I brought it up because the area to set the DHCP Options in DBUTIL is under the PXE Service.

We have set the "EmpirumServer" option to 129, left the value blank, and marked the option as "enabled" within DBUTIL under the Empirum-PXE Services. On the Cisco Router at one of our locations we have enabled option 129, entered the name "EmpirumServer', and set the value to the FQDN of the local Empirum server.

I will post our findings later. Thank you again...

...and don´t forget to enable the "dhcp options" flag in the Advanced Agent configuration too.
Reinstall the agent afterwards to make sure.

For checking use:
- dhcpapitest-tool
- debugview-log

I believe we have it working. Within Debugview I was able to see the option be seen and applied to the system in addition to the agentconfig file get reapplied as expected. Once those two actions occurred I pushed a distribution of PM2 to the device and could see the agent connect to and pull the install and all patch files from the depot server assigned to the configuration group the system was assigned.

Thank you for the help with this!

00013813 385.22314453 [2012] DhcpOptionReader.cpp(140):INFO Dhcp Scanning Adapter: Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260...
00013814 385.22317505 [2012] DhcpOptionReader.cpp(154):INFO Dhcp Option "EmpirumServer" with ID 129 will be requested
00013815 385.22338867 [2012] DhcpOptionReader.cpp(187):INFO Dhcp Received 23 bytes from DHCP server: "HCCGRRFP1.TOMKINSBP.COM" for option 129
00013816 385.22341919 [2012] ConnectionTester.cpp(69):INFO ConnectionTester Checking EmpirumServer HCCGRRFP1.TOMKINSBP.COM from dhcp option with user airdistribution\matrix
00013817 385.22344971 [2012] ComJobFactory.cpp(618):INFO Job Factory Job JobCheckServer create
00013818 385.22348022 [2012] ComJobManager.cpp(421):INFO Job Manager starting Job 9e563c3c-3753-47a0-84cb-9b1140c83d26
00013819 385.22351074 [2012] ComJobInvoker.cpp(253):INFO Job Invoker Job-Thread initialisiert
00013820 385.22354126 [2012] ComJobManager.cpp(317):INFO Job Manager Job 9e563c3c-3753-47a0-84cb-9b1140c83d26 started
00013821 385.22357178 [2012] # normal # JobDoneCallback-> JobID: 9e563c3c-3753-47a0-84cb-9b1140c83d26 Status: JOBSTATUS_RUNNING Flag: 0
00013822 385.22363281 [2012] ComJobManager.cpp(215):INFO Job Manager added Job 9e563c3c-3753-47a0-84cb-9b1140c83d26
00013823 385.22412109 [2012] ComJobSmb.cpp(68):INFO Job Smb Transport Smb starten
00013824 385.22412109 [2012] ComJobSmb.cpp(721):INFO Job Smb Transport Smb Remote verbinden