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BOS Enterprise Manager for remote BOS control

What is the BOS Enterprise Manager?

BOS Enterprise Manager is a BOS module that enables you to control the BOS machines in your organization/s.  With it, you can achieve the following:

• View the status of the BOS service on remote machines (up and running, unavailable, etc…)

• View the version of BOS installation on remote machines

• View the last activity log that was created on the remote machine (Contains the last performed backup's date and time, the status in which it ended, etc…)

• Upgrade the remote machine with a new installation of BOS – without the need of physical access to the machine

• Schedule periodic checks of BOS on remote machines.

How do I get to it?

Not every computer should be an Enterprise Manager. In your enterprise, you probably need only one administrative machine to remotely control all others.

In order to activate the enterprise management tool, please perform the following steps in the machine that is to be the Enterprise Manager:

1.  Stop the BOS Monitor service (Start > Run > "net stop BOSMonitorService")

2.  Open the sub-directory called 'Sessions' within the BOS installation dir (for example: C:\Program Files\BOS - Backup prOxy Server\Sessions)

3.  Manually create an empty file called 'Master.bos'. This file turns your machine into the master machine in your organization.

4.  Start the BOS Monitor Service (Start > Run > "net start BosMonitorService")

Steps 1 to 4 are a one-time procedure

5. From the Utilities Button on the Monitor Form, choose the 'Show Enterprise Manager' option

What do these mean?!

Hello!. This is your enterprise manager screen:

1. The name of the machine that is remotely managed. Optional, if IP exists.

2. The IP of the machine that is remotely managed. Optional, if Name exists.

3. The remote machine's install version. After performing the first check on a machine (manual or periodic) this field will contain the version of BOS installation on the relevant machine.

4. The Status of the last performed action on this machine (check, upgrade, etc…)

5. Time stamp of the last check performed (manual or periodic) on this machine.

6. Sets the interval (by seconds) during which the auto-monitoring mechanism waits between checks (if periodic check is enabled).

7. Choose 'Start Monitoring' to enable the periodic check every <interval> seconds.

8. Choose 'Stop Monitoring' to disable the periodic check every <interval> seconds.

9. Performs immediate check on all enabled machines on the list (see the 'Machine Actions' section for more information about enabling/disabling a machine).

10. Performs immediate BOS version upgrade action on all enabled machines on the list (see the 'Upgrade' section for more information about upgrade)

11. 'Scan for Machines', the automatic network scanning for BOS machines, is not supported in this version of the BOS Enterprise Manager.

12. Location of Upgrade Files is the network (or local) path from which the upgrade files are taken (see 'Upgrade Location' section for more information about the upgrade location).

13. If this field is checked – trying to upgrade a machine with an installation version equal to the master machine's will result in a message of 'upgrade is not needed', and no upgrade will be performed on the remote machine. Un-check this field to upgrade the remote machine regardless of its version.

14. The status panel shows the general state of your BOS machines. If all machines were successfully checked or upgraded – the status panel shows a small blue line reading: 'Systems are OK'. If at least one machine did not respond, or any of the actions performed on it failed – the panel will show a blinking red alert of 'ERROR!'. On the next all-machines-are-good check, the alert panel will return to its calm state.

15. Hides the Enterprise manager form. You can restore it by clicking again on the 'Show Enterprise Manager' option in the Utilities menu. While the Enterprise Manager is hidden, it still performs periodic checks (if not configured differently).

16. Stops the annoying 'ERROR!' alert from blinking, and brings it back to its calm state (even though errors occurred and have not yet been fixed).

Machine Actions

How to control the list of machines, and the individual actions on each machine?

By the popup menu, of course!

Add Machine – Use this option to add a new BOS machine to the manager. Only after you add a machine, you can perform actions on it. Before that – none!

Edit Machine – Use this option to edit the name or the IP of the chosen machine.

Remove Machine – remove a BOS machine from the manager. No more actions will be performed on it.

Check Machine Now – performs immediate check on this machine, regardless of its state (enabled/disabled) and the periodic check state (enabled/disabled/just performed a second ago). See more about checks in the 'Check Machine' section.

Upgrade Machine Now – tries to perform an immediate upgrade of the chosen machine. See more about Upgrades in the 'Upgrade' section.

View check Log lets you view the latest log file that was created on the remote machine at the time it was last successfully checked. The log is opened with Notepad.

Disable/Enable Machine is toggled by the state of the chosen machine, and lets you take a machine out of the collective actions' loop (Check All Machines, Upgrade Machines), and back in - when wanted. Disabled machines are skipped when a collective action is performed. They visually differ from enabled machines by being displayed as gray items in the list. It is possible to perform individual actions on a disabled machine (Check Machine Now, Upgrade Machine Now).

What is the 'Check Machine' mechanism?

When a machine is being checked, the following steps take place:

1. A TCP connection is opened to the remote machine.

2. The installation version info is retrieved.

3. The last log that was created on the remote machine is retrieved, and saved locally. It will stay available to view by the popup menu option.

What happens during the 'Upgrade' process?

The Upgrade Process comprises the following steps:

1. Creation of a TCP connection to the remote machine.

2. Transfer of the 3 necessary files to the remote machine. The files are taken from the  'Upgrade Location' field on the form, and are extracted by the remote machine to its Temp directory. From there, they will be run.

3. The Installation is finished.

The Upgrade Location

Two important things must happen in order to achieve a successful Upgrade Process:

1. The upgrade location must be accessible to the master machine (the machine that is the enterprise manager). A local hard drive is preferred as location, in order NOT to deal with network access permissions.

2. The following 3 files must be placed in the upgrade location, for the enterprise manager to be able to send them to the remote machines:

• Installation setup file (for example: bos2100b.exe)

• InstallManager.exe, which is a small executable that performs the pre-installation steps, the installation itself, and the post-installation steps on the remote machine. This file is shipped as a part of the installation package.

• Remoteinstall.bos, a configuration file that defines what actions should the InstallManager.exe perform, and what is the installation setup file name. More on this configuration file in the 'Remoteinstall.bos' section. This file is a simple text file, editable, which is shipped as a part of the installation package.

Remoteinstall.bos

The Remoteinstall.bos file is a standard .INI file. Here is a good example to how it should look:

[General]

Target -Contains the name of the installation setup file.

A file with the same name should be present in the UpgradeLocation, because the upgrade process looks

for this value to determine the identity of the installation file that should be transferred.

[Before] and [After]

These sections control the actions that will be performed before the installation and after it. Each one of these sections has the value Steps which tells the install manager how many steps are to be read and executed.

Step1 to StepN (in which N is the number assigned to the 'Steps' value) are the actions descriptors. They can be of the following types:

Kill – this command, followed by a name of an executable, aggressively kills all running instances of the specified executable on the remote machine. Important Notice: The installation is run under local administrator credentials, and it can only kill applications that were run by this user. If the local administrator that was configured to BOS (see 'Local Administrator' section) is not the current logged-in user on the remote machine, the application could not be killed.

Stop – this command, followed by a service name, stops the running of a service on the remote machine. Important Notice: the service name is its display name, and not it's executable name. In our case: BosMonitorService, and not MonitorService.exe.

Start – this command, followed by a service name, starts the running of a service on the remote machine. Important Notice: the service name is its display name, and not it's executable name. In our case: BosMonitorService, and not MonitorService.exe.

Run – this command, followed by an executable name and the arguments that are to be sent to him, creates a process on the remote machine with that executable name, and sends the arguments (if any) as command line parameters to it. You have 3 ways of specifying an application to run:

• Only the file name (Searched in the Temp directory and in the rest of the system's path on the remote machine)

• The full path to the exe name (explicitly tries to run the file from the specified path on the remote machine)

• %BOS%\<Executable File Name> - runs the application from BOS's installation directory on the remote machine.

Local Administrator

The remote machine runs the Install Manager with the credentials of the local administrator on this machine. You must make sure that BOS is configured to know which user is the local administrator on each one of the remote machines. To do so, follow the following procedure once on each BOS Machine in your organization:

1.      Open BOS GUI application (BosConfig.exe)

2.      Open the Options form.

3.      In the Login Accounts tab, add the local administrator's username and password (if not already there)

4.      Choose the local administrator from the list and press the Set Local Admin button. The panel at the bottom of the form shows your selection.

5.      Exit the Options form and agree to save the changes you have just made.