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Block 64 Discovery Agent MSI/EXE overview

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Block 64's Discovery Agent

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The Block 64 Discovery Agent comes in two options the Executable and an MSI (.exe /.msi )

The EXE version of the Discovery Agent and its functions are outlined in our documentation found here: Slingshot Basics

MSI Discovery Agent vs EXE Discovery Agent

The Key differences between our MSI and our EXE are that our Discovery Agent EXE is simply a one-time inventory that runs when executed and the MSI is an installed program that will continuously re-inventory the endpoint daily until uninstalled.

Discovery Agent System Requirements

  • Discovery Agent runs on the.NET Core 3.1 framework.
  • Detailed requirements for the framework are listed here.
  • Discovery Agent has been tested successfully on up-to-date builds of Windows 7 SP1 or greater, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016.
  • 5GB of disk space is recommended
  • Outbound access to combine.block64.com & sublimation.block64.com on ports 443 as well as 8810 in order to receive the inventory payload and aggregate it with your other inventory results

EXE Slingshot Deployment:

  1. Download the Discovery Agent agent using the URL provided by your Partner or Block 64 Support Agent, on the machine (EXE or MSI).
  2. Run the executable. A CLI window will appear as shown below. Allow to run until you see “Uploaded data to https://combine.block64.com/slingshot/upload successfully.” after which, you can close the program if they wish to do so. If the application is left open, it will re-upload data every 2 hours. The application will not continue running after reboot.

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MSI Discovery Agent Deployment:

An MSI is a Windows Installer database. Windows Installer uses this to install software on your system. The MSI Discovery Agent is a pre-packaged installation file that will install the Discovery Agent tool onto the target system until it is removed by uninstalling it from the add or remove programs settings.

 

  1. Download the Discovery Agent using the URL provided by your Partner or Block 64 Support Agent, on the machine (MSI).
  2. You can either deploy the MSI with a device management program such as SSCM, Intune (Intune Deployment ), Group Policy or manually install the tool on an endpoint with the installation file.

Below is a command to make the installation completely silent when deploying via a device management program.

MSI parameter: /quiet  (Quiet mode, no user interaction)

  1. The Slingshot MSI consists of the Slingshot tool with no command window as the program will run the inventory in the background along with a typical program installation (the program will be installed into the Windows-installed programs list as “Slingshot”).

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The Discovery Agent MSI will continuously upload a fresh inventory of the endpoint daily to the URL  https://combine.block64.com/slingshot/upload .

NOTE:  When using Discovery Agent, the Block 64 Agent-less Discovery tools (Block 64 Windows Application and Blockbox) will not reflect the devices inventoried by Slingshot as that data is sent directly to the analytics portal, Combine.

Log file location:

The MSI Discovery Agent Log is located in the directory (C:\Windows\Temp\Block64) as “SlingshotYYYYMMDD.log”

Here you will see the success or failure of each upload attempt, which will include date and time stamps.

Successful Inventory Message:

  • DD/MM/YY 10:38:16.474 [INF] (Core.Worker) Thread-11 Collected inventory
  • DD/MM/YY 10:38:16.744 [INF] (CommunicationsLib.Upload) Thread-11 Uploading message with length **kb to "https://combine.block64.com/slingshot/upload/"
  • DD/MM/YY 10:38:17.328 [INF] (CommunicationsLib.Upload) Thread-5 Uploaded data to "https://combine.block64.com/slingshot/upload/" successfully.
  • (Note: There should be a payload in (**KB) message.)