Configuring Agents with Beacon IP Address & Preventing Overwrites

[johnksilverwood]

We have a unique situation while deploying the agent, and wondering if anyone had any ideas. Currently working with Flexera to determine solutions.

Server background:

• Servers are not domain joined to main network
  • They cannot resolve DNS to IP address from our main DNS servers
  • Meaning - server must receive install with beacon IP address hard coded in it
• The Problem - Agent will then download policy with the list of beacons as DNS name and overwrite that IP address, preventing future updates to policy & inventory uploads.

Solutions:

One solution was suggested that we adjust all beacon configurations to use IP address only.

This seems like it would work, but we're not sure what the downstream ramifications are.

Question:
Does anyone else have a similar situation & suggestions/solutions? We are wondering if there's any other way to prevent these agents from receiving the policy that has the DNS name. 

These problem servers are <1% of our footprint, so hesitant to make any sweeping changes to the beacons.

[tjohnson1]

You can manually create entries for the beacons using the IP Address in the agent config. The following article has an example: https://docs.flexera.com/fnms/EN/GatherFNInv/index.html#SysRef/FlexNetInventoryAgent/topics/NetSel-SingleIB.html

[jasonlu]

@johnksilverwood , I've used that linked to solution with success.

You have to assume that the beacons you are doing this on have static IPs and won't change in the future.

You probably wouldn't use this solution on an externally facing beacon, but this is out of scope for your use case.

j