New capability - Track your hard-to-reach assets using IT Agent, the future of LsAgent

[#1]

Hi everyone!

Lansweeper is delighted to announce the availability of its new IT Agent in your Lansweeper Site. Track your hard-to-reach assets using the IT Agent which tracks the details of a single computer running Windows, Linux, or Apple MacOS and sends these directly to your Lansweeper Site.

How to access IT Agent in your Lansweeper Site

1. Open a browser and navigate to https://app.lansweeper.com.
2. Choose the Lansweeper Site to which you want to link the IT Agent Discovery. 
3. Go to Scanning > Discovery systems > Download installers/packages > IT Agent Discovery

A brief explanation

• Learn how to install/deploy IT Agent here.

• After a successful installation, the IT Agent(s) will be shown in your Lansweeper Site in Scanning > Discovery systems.

• To see the asset data, you can open Inventory > All assets (and you can use the search/advanced filter on the top right to filter on the specific assets/installation where IT Agent is running)

Product comparison

Lansweeper IT Agent vs LsAgent vs Network Discovery

Topic	Lansweeper IT Agent (Portable)	Lansweeper LsAgent	Lansweeper Network Discovery
Summary	Newest generation local tracking of any IT device running Windows, Linux or macOS device (including guest virtual machines and connected monitors)	Older generation local tracking of any IT device running Windows, Linux or macOS device (including guest virtual machines and connected monitors)	Discover all IT assets in your network. OT discovery will be added to the same installer/package later on
Asset reach	By default, local tracking only, no other network devices are discovered. This can be changed, but we recommend using Network Discovery for discovering network devices instead	Local tracking only, no other network devices are discovered. To discover network devices in combination with LsAgent, we recommend using Lansweeper On-Premise	Tracks both the machine running Network Discovery and discovers IT (and later OT) assets remotely
Asset data	Expanded default IT discovery data set (extra data like user info on macOS)	Default IT discovery data set	Expanded default IT (and later OT) discovery data set (extra data like user info on macOS)
Credentials	No credentials required for local tracking (runs as local system or similar elevated user by default). Credentials are optional for remote discovery but we advise to use Network Discovery for discovering network devices instead.	No credentials required for local tracking (runs as local system or similar elevated user by default).	Requires credentials to get all asset details remotely. Can recognize assets without credential though
Network access	Syncs with Lansweeper Site directly To sync with your Lansweeper Site, HTTP2 proxy is supported Check Install IT Agent Discovery - Lansweeper Community for connection requirements Send results to Network Discovery hub or to a file on a network drive for later import into Lansweeper Site. See Set up and run Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Portable	Does not sync with Lansweeper Site directly HTTP2 proxy is not supported Requires a scan server to connect to (from a Lansweeper On-Premise installation). Can also connect first to Lansweeper LsAgent Relay server, see this link. Can save results to a file for import into Lansweeper On-Premise via scan server	Requires specific ports to be open on the assets to discover. See Ports scanned or used by Lansweeper To sync with your Lansweeper Site, HTTP2 proxy is supported
Auto update	Auto update on Windows, Linux and macOS	Auto update on Windows. Linux and macOS require manual updates	Auto update on Windows, Linux and macOS
Vulnerability risks	Built on .NET 8.0 with a reduced vulnerability risk in comparison to .NET FW 4.8	Built on .NET FW 4.8 (Windows) and .NET 6.0 (Linux, macOS)	Built on .NET 8.0 with a reduced vulnerability risk in comparison to .NET FW 4.8

Kind regards,

Gilian De Raes
Product Manager | Lansweeper

[eputz]

Thanks I'll take a look. Going forward how do we ensure that our ongoing ITAgent installs are not ending up in that Default group as we don't want to have to keep manually managing group memberships?

[Gilian]

@eputz this was resolved during the current preview phase. All new IT Agents are now joining "Default IT Agent" Group by default. You can change their membership manually in your LS Site to give them different settings like their auto update behavior.

[eputz]

@Gilian so we have 2552 components in 'Default Group' and 2367 in 'Default Group IT Agent' , when I click into the Default Group, I'm not seeing any option for managing the membership - it's all greyed out so how do we easily:

1. bulk manage the discovery group membership of our assets
2. get a report to see which groups our assets below too?

[brian_blater]

First and foremost I'm flabbergasted on the support Lansweeper provides for the IT Agent. The excuse is always in preview and unsupported. Go to this group. You would think being in preview ("beta") that they would want to know of any potential issues, but no. Ok, rant over.

I have linked our on prem server to the Cloud and installing the IT Agent on our machines with Intune and Jamf. The install is actually going quite well. However, I'm not sure how IT Agent assets function in the new cloud version. I know they do not show up in the on prem assets for now.

One of the questions I have... we have over 500 assets in Lansweeper. Most of those are now macs using the IT Agent. I have some IP Locations setup (they were setup in Classic) and machines are not being assigned to those locations.

From the looks of it, only machines from Classic with LsAgent are in these locations, but that is only like 50 or so. We are missing a bunch.

Is this a manual process? I've got machines in several offices and all over the world (some connecting over VPN) and would like to be able to look at an asset and know where it last connected. Is this even possible?

[Gilian]

Hi @brian_blater

Thanks for raising this. We certainly want to know about potential issues as this improves the quality of our preview features for all users. Our current process is: GA features are covered by our global support team while Preview features are covered by the product/development team using this community and preview@lansweeper.com.

IP locations are used to give your IP ranges and VLANs a unique name, grouping the included assets based on their IP address. IP locations are specific to any LS On Premise installation and do not include IT Agent/Network/Cloud Discovery assets (yet). If you also use these discovery systems, you can create a new custom report in Reports > Create new report. When you use the fields and filter below you can create a report for each relevant IP range.

Fields:

/*

specifications - The fields to include or exclude

*/

{

  "assetName": 1,

  "ipAddress": 1,

  "asServer.asServerId": 1,

  "lastSeen": 1,

  "lastTried": 1,

  "lastLsAgent": 1,

  "installKey": 1

}

Filters:

{
"$or": [
{
"$and": [
{
"ipAddress": {
"$exists": true,
"$nin": [
"",
null
]
}
},
{
"ipAddress": {
"$startWith": "10.37.0"
}
}
]
}
]
}

[eputz]

@Gilian - Hi Gilian - any update on how we can bulk manage the Group Memberships for our ITAgents for a bulk move of the 2000+ devices which are not in the 'Default Group IT Agent' ?

[Gilian]

@eputz not available yet, but I've asked an update from our development team. This should become available during this month, October.

[brian_blater]

Ok, I can do a report then to get the information I'm looking for in this way. However, it makes me wonder what the purpose of an IP Location in Lansweeper then? I may be misunderstanding what it is used for.

[Gilian]

@brian_blater 

IP locations give you the option to address a filter of IP ranges with a chosen displayname. This is fully functional for LS On Prem but not yet ready for Network/IT Agent/Cloud Discovery. For this to work, IP locations should no longer require an "installation" property which they still do at the moment. We plan to solve this so IP locations are fully managed at the inventory side in your LS Site, across all assets, regardless of where/how they were added to your inventory.

[brian_blater]

Ok. For now I will rely on the Reports until the IP Locations work with IT Agent. thx

[rinks]

Searched around for a bit and didn't find the answer, but I want to make sure before I assume so... I remember IT Agent being limited to 500 assets but I can't seem to find if that is still the case.

Is IT Agent still limited to only 500 assets, or can we deploy company-wide?

[Gilian]

Hi @rinks ,

We offer an FAQ on IT Agent, which you can find here: IT Agent Discovery: Frequently Asked Questions - Lansweeper. There you'll find the answer being there's no limit and you can deploy company-wide.

[RGommersElcee]

Hello,

I've just installed IT Agent on our first computer. After pasting a working code, the installation failed because a link to our Lansweeper site could not be made. From the log:
[2024-10-16 15:00:26] Unknown error while running curl.exe -k "https://localhost:59530/status/hub" -o "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp/ls_cloudlinking.json"
[2024-10-16 15:00:26] Setting variable IsLinkedToCloud from jq-win64.exe
[2024-10-16 15:00:26] Error running jq-win64.exe -r "\"\(.linkingInfo.isLinked)\"" "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp/ls_cloudlinking.json": jq: error: Could not open file C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp/ls_cloudlinking.json: No such file or directory

Why does it look for a file that doesn't exist? Bug in the installer?

[Gilian]

Hi @RGommersElcee , thanks for raising this issue.

I've created an internal bug for this ACME-26065

Meanwhile, you can download the latest IT Agent installer for Windows from "https://app.lansweeper.com > Scanning > Discovery systems > Downloads/packages" and save the following code as a new file called ITAgentCleanup.bat.

@echo off

:: BatchGotAdmin
:-------------------------------------
REM  --> Check for permissions
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
    echo Requesting administrative privileges...
    goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
    echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    set params = %*:"=""
    echo UAC.ShellExecute "cmd.exe", "/c %~s0 %params%", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

    "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    exit /B

:gotAdmin
    pushd "%CD%"
    CD /D "%~dp0"
:--------------------------------------
:: Uninstall Lansweeper IT Agent
"C:\Program Files\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery\uninstall.exe" --mode unattended

:: Sleep for x seconds to continue
TIMEOUT /T 300

:: Ensure lingering services are stopped and removed
sc stop "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Hub Service"
sc delete "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Hub Service"
sc stop "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Sensor Service"
sc delete "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Sensor Service"
sc stop "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Update Service"
sc delete "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery Update Service"

:: Sleep for x seconds to continue
TIMEOUT /T 60

:: Delete default install directory
del /S "C:\Program Files\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery\*"

:: Cleanup first reg location
for /f "delims="  %%a in ('reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lansweeper" ^| find "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery"') do (set "regs=%%a")
echo %regs%
reg delete "%regs%" /f

:: Cleanup second reg location
for /f "delims="  %%a in ('reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" ^| find "Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery"') do (set "regs=%%a")
echo %regs%
reg delete "%regs%" /f

:: Reinstall Lansweeper IT Agent
:: Todo: in the following line, correct the path to the actual location of theinstaller and also the cloudtokenvalue from your LS Site in https://app.lansweeper.com > Scanning > Discovery systems > Link discovery system. After doing so, uncomment the last line (removing the ::) and run this file
:: C:\Temp\Lansweeper-IT-agent-discovery-0.23.2-windows-x64-installer.exe --mode unattended --accepteula 1 --path "C:\Program Files\Lansweeper IT Agent Discovery" --cloudtoken cloudtokenvalue

 Edit the last line in a text editor and run it on your computer.

[eputz]

Hi @Gilian - any update on when the bulk management for group memberships will be available?