Agent

An agent is a component of the SCOM architecture used to monitor the health of services on a monitored computer.

Description
The agent is one of the most important part of a SCOM platform. It is deployed on all the computers (usually servers) deemed important enough to be monitored.

Once deployed, it runs a windows service Health Service to monitor the workflows running on the computer.

The workflows are run depending of the objects found by the discoveries. Once the monitored objects are discovered, the agent download from a Management Server the Management Pack files relevant to the classes found during the discovery.

Agent Installation Method
The deployment is done by using one of the agent installation method:
 * A Push installation can be performed by using the Discovery wizard in the Operations Console under the Administration workspace. The monitored computers are discovered across the network by using one of the Management Server. And the agent package is remotely installed.
 * A manual installation involves the installation of the agent manually by using the installation package. Depending of the organization it might be done by either an operator, administrator or a member of another department of the organization such as the Helpdesk.
 * A Silent installation involves the use of the same agent installation package than in the manual installation, the difference being an automation script is used to perform the installation without manually performing the installation wizard.
 * A GPO installation involves using a deployment Group Policy Object (GPO) in Active Directory to deploy automatically the agent to a given set of computers. To automate the process, this method uses the same silent installation configuration file than in the Silent installation method.
 * A SCCM software deployment used the deployment solution to automatically install the agent on a set of given computers in the organization.