SolarWinds Knowledge Base

The LEM Remote Agent Installer allows you to push SolarWinds Log & Event Manager Agents to Microsoft Windows hosts across your network. The installer unzips the installation files to a temporary folder of your choice, searches for Windows systems across your network, and installs the LEM Agents, one at a time, to the systems of your choice. The installed LEM Agents then automatically start up and connect to your LEM Manager.

This article contains the following sections:

• Installer Requirements
• Agent Hardware Specifications
• Installation Folders
• Antivirus Recommendations
• Installing LEM Agents Across Your WAN
• Running the LEM Agent Installer

Installer Requirements

• A reboot is not required
• XP SP3 Compatibility Mode – Required when running the LEM Agent installer on a Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 system
• A user account with privileges to write to Windows administrative shares such as C$:\ or D$:\

Agent Hardware Specifications

Installation Folders

LEM Agents are installed to the following folders, according to the bitness of their host operating systems:

Antivirus Recommendations

• Set an exception in your antivirus or anti-malware scanning software for the ContegoSPOP folder where the LEM Agents will be installed. The alerts are kept in queue files, which change constantly as they are normalized and encrypted.
• Turn off any anti-malware or endpoint protection applications on host systems during the installation process, as they can affect the process by which installation files are transferred to the hosts.

Installing LEM Agents Across Your WAN

If you are installing LEM Agents on the far end of a WAN link, copy the Remote Agent Installer executable to the end of the WAN link and run it there. This will avoid using your WAN bandwidth to copy LEM Agents multiple times.

Running the LEM Agent Installer

To run the Remote Agent installer, complete the following procedure:

1. If you are a licensed LEM customer, download the installer from the SolarWinds Customer Portal:
   1. Browse to http://www.solarwinds.com/customerportal/LicenseManagement.aspx.
   2. Log in with your SWID if necessary.
   3. Find LEM in the product list, and then click Choose Download.
   4. Find the Remote Agent Installer on the list.
2. If you are an evaluation LEM customer, see KB3366 for the available LEM Agent installers.
3. Extract the contents of the installer ZIP file to a local or network location.
4. Run inremagent.exe.
5. Click Next to start the installation wizard.
6. Accept the End User License Agreement and click Next.
7. Specify a temporary folder on your computer to use for the installation process and click Next. The default is C:\SolarWindsLEMMultiInstall.
8. Enter the hostname of your LEM Manager in the Manager Name field and click Next. Do not change the default port values.
   Note: Use the fully qualified domain name for your LEM Manager when you deploy LEM Agents on a different domain. For example, enter LEMhostname.SolarWinds.com.
9. Select Get hosts automatically or Get hosts from file (One host per line) and click OK.
   • Get hosts automatically uses a NetBIOS broadcast to identify hosts on the same subnet and domain as the computer running the installer.
   • Get hosts from file (One host per line) prompts you to browse for a text file that includes the hosts on which you want to install LEM Agents. Use this option for any of the following reasons:
     • You are deploying LEM Agents to computers on a different subnet than that on which the computer running the installer resides. Your computer may be able to access these subnets, but their hosts will not be recognized by the NetBIOS broadcast used to get hosts automatically.
     • You are deploying LEM Agents to a small segment of a large network, which could make choosing them from a list time prohibitive.
     • You are deploying LEM Agents in a network with a complex naming scheme, which could make choosing hosts from a list time prohibitive.
       Note: The text file used for this option can contain hostnames, fully qualified domain names or IP addresses, each on their own lines. If DNS names are used, the computer running the installer must be able to resolve them.
10. Select the checkboxes next to the computers on which you want to install a LEM Agent.
11. Click Next.
12. Confirm the list provided is correct and click Next again.
13. Specify the Windows destination for the remote installation.
    • The default paths are provided for all supported Windows systems. We strongly recommend using the default paths, as the LEM Agent may not recognized as a service by Windows if it is not installed in a system folder.
    • The installer is set to automatically detect host operating systems by default, but you can also specify an operating system if all of the target hosts are running the same one.
14. Click Next.
15. Specify whether or not you want to install USB-Defender with the LEM Agent and click Next. The installer will include USB-Defender by default. To omit this from the installation, clear the Install USB-Defender checkbox.
    Note: We recommend installing USB-Defender on every system. USB-Defender will never detach a USB device unless you have explicitly enabled a rule to do so. By default, USB-Defender simply generates alerts for USB mass storage devices attached to your LEM Agents.
16. Confirm the settings on the Pre-Installation Summary and click Install.
17. After the installer extracts the installation files to the temporary directory defined for your computer in Step 7, click Next to proceed.

At this point, the installer will copy the extracted files to the installation directory defined for the target hosts in Step 13, and notify you of any failures during the process.

After it's installed, the Agent starts automatically on each host and the installer removes the temporary installation directory from your computer.