SmartBatch Remote Agent (Enterprise Edition)

The ability to accomplish cross-system scheduling is made possible with the use of the SmartBatch Remote Agent. When configuring an Operation (Operation Properties), you can specify the Computer Group that you want the Operation to run on. When the Executive Server processes the Operation, it determines if it is to be run locally or on another computer (that is, remotely). If remote, it queues the request to the computer or computers identified in the Computer Group. The Remote Agent will immediately process requests from the queue and send information back to the Executive Server identifying if the Operation ran successfully or not.

The Remote Agent uses message queuing technology to communicate with the Executive Server. This requires that you have message queue available to both the Executive Server computer and Remote Agent computer. If it is not available an appropriate error message will be written to the Executive Server or Remote Agent log file.  The Executive Server sends requests to Remote Agents to run Operations remotely. The Remote Agent accepts requests from the message queue and reports back when processing has completed or an error has occurred. When there is no activity for the Remote Agent, it consumes no CPU resources and it simply waits for requests to arrive in the message queuing from the Executive Server.

The Remote Agent must be installed on each computer that you want this capability to exist. The remote agent is a small software component that can be installed as a service under Windows or a program in the startup folder.  The remote agent supports Windows 98, NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5 or greater, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and beyond. The .NET framework must be installed on the Remote Agent computer.