Agent Client Collector Discovery

[OMT]

Hello,
We currently use Horizontal IP-based discovery to discover our IT infrastructure.
We are currently planning to use an agent client collector(ACC) for discovering our Windows servers because, due to hardening of Windows, we will no longer be able to use horizontal discovery (authentification topic).

We successfully installed the agent on one server and communication with the mid-server was successful.
The open questions I have are:

1. Is it possible to schedule agent discovery like in Horizontal and how?
2. Where can we see the status of agent discovery?

3. I saw that on the host machine where the agent is installed, I cannot find acc.yml, only acc.yml.example (but I can download it from the platform).

4. I also noticed that there are no acc.log files on the host machine, why and where to find?.

5. Does anyone know the best way to use agents on cca 2500 servers and different network ranges? Should we analyse which agent is on which network and then use a different mid server for each network to communicate with those agents and bring data to the platform?

Thanks in advance, 
Br, Tahir

[SK Chand Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi @OMT 

1. Yes, it is possible to schedule discovery using ACC similar to Horizontal Discovery.
   There is a scheduled job called “Refresh host data for Agents” which runs periodically (by default every 1 hour). Additionally, different ACC policies can be configured with different collection intervals depending on your requirements.

2. You can check the agent discovery status from:

• All → Agent Client Collector → Agents
  Here you can see all installed agents, their status, and the MID Server used for communication.

• All → Agent Client Collector → Agent Health Dashboard
  This provides overall agent health and communication status.

3. The file acc.yml is available on the server itself, but the location is hidden by default.
   Navigate to:

C:\ProgramData\ServiceNow\Agent\Config

Make sure Hidden Items are enabled in Windows Explorer because the folder is programdata hidden by default.

4. ACC logs are available under the logs directory on the host machine.
   You can find them here:

C:\ProgramData\ServiceNow\Agent\Logs

If you do not see logs immediately, verify that the ACC service is running successfully.

5. For around 2500 servers across different network ranges, the best approach is usually:

• Use deployment tools such as Microsoft Intune, SCCM, or other third-party deployment tools to deploy ACC agents in bulk.

• Use multiple MID Servers strategically based on network segmentation, firewall rules

• Assign agents to the nearest/relevant MID Server for better scalability and communication efficiency.

[thomasbueck · Accepted solution]

@OMT 
Open one of the ootb policies and switch to the tab "scheduling"  tick "Cron-based scheduling" and you can use cron based scheduling at policy level, by this you can decide when it should run and at which day. You can easily find posts and videos which explains how to set them up.

[SK Chand Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi @OMT 

1. Yes, it is possible to schedule discovery using ACC similar to Horizontal Discovery.
   There is a scheduled job called “Refresh host data for Agents” which runs periodically (by default every 1 hour). Additionally, different ACC policies can be configured with different collection intervals depending on your requirements.

2. You can check the agent discovery status from:

• All → Agent Client Collector → Agents
  Here you can see all installed agents, their status, and the MID Server used for communication.

• All → Agent Client Collector → Agent Health Dashboard
  This provides overall agent health and communication status.

3. The file acc.yml is available on the server itself, but the location is hidden by default.
   Navigate to:

C:\ProgramData\ServiceNow\Agent\Config

Make sure Hidden Items are enabled in Windows Explorer because the folder is programdata hidden by default.

4. ACC logs are available under the logs directory on the host machine.
   You can find them here:

C:\ProgramData\ServiceNow\Agent\Logs

If you do not see logs immediately, verify that the ACC service is running successfully.

5. For around 2500 servers across different network ranges, the best approach is usually:

• Use deployment tools such as Microsoft Intune, SCCM, or other third-party deployment tools to deploy ACC agents in bulk.

• Use multiple MID Servers strategically based on network segmentation, firewall rules

• Assign agents to the nearest/relevant MID Server for better scalability and communication efficiency.

[OMT]

Hi @SK Chand Basha,

Thank you for your response. It was very helpful. I have aready found the acc.yml file and can now also see the Agent logs.

I have also found the scheduled job 'Refresh host data for agents'. It's read only and in a 'ready' state. By default, it should collect data every hour, but when I open my agent, I see that the last data collection date is yesterday, when I did it manually.It seems to not work properly.

Is there also  a way to change this, so that it collects data, for example, every night and not every hour?

Do you have an example of a policy, or do you know where I can find one for scheduling? I found the policies table, but it's not very intuitive.

We have decided to use four MidServers, which will be placed in our security groups and receive data from the agents in those groups. Therefore, we will need to find an appropriate way to deploy four different packages to the different security group agents.
Thanks a lot!

[thomasbueck · Accepted solution]

@OMT 
Open one of the ootb policies and switch to the tab "scheduling"  tick "Cron-based scheduling" and you can use cron based scheduling at policy level, by this you can decide when it should run and at which day. You can easily find posts and videos which explains how to set them up.

[OMT]

Hi, there are no OOB policies..