Configuring Manager-Agent Communication

By default, the eG agent-manager communication is neither authenticated, nor encrypted. This default setting can however be overridden by the administrator. For this, the procedure discussed below should be followed:

  1. From the Agents tile, pick the Settings option.

  2. When Figure 1 appears, pick the Communication node from the agent settings panel.

    agentmanagercommn

    Figure 1 : Settings for the eG manager - agent communication

  3. A manager-agent communication panel then appears in the right panel (see Figure 1). Using the Authenticate option, an administrator can turn on or off authentication of agents by the eG manager. The default option is No, indicating that authentication is disabled. An administrator may choose to turn on authentication by selecting the Yes option. Enabling authentication ensures that only a specified agent(s) is reporting metrics to the eG manager, and not any other malicious program.
  4. The Encrypt option determines whether data communication from the agent to the manager is encrypted or not. The default option is No, indicating that encryption is off. You can switch on encryption by choosing the Yes option. Typically, you might want to enable encryption if measure data is to be transmitted over a HTTP connection. If using HTTPS already, then this option is NOT required. For a HTTP based eG manager/agent setup, this option provides a way for secure communication without the elaborate setup needed for SSL.