How do I configure authentication to monitor or manage the agents that are in a separate Windows Domain or Workgroup?

Article ID: 283
Category: Management Console
Applies to: 3.0 and newer
Updated: 2018-11-08

1) Make sure the "EventSentry Heartbeat Monitor" service on your management console computer is configured to run under an account that has administrator rights on your management console computer. To check/change this, open the services manager (Start > run > services.msc) and double-click the "EventSentry Heartbeat Monitor" service, and click the "Log On" tab to see which account is being used, and to change the account if you're not using an account with administrator rights. If you needed to change the account, you have to restart this service when you're done.

2) Make sure the EventSentry management console is not open. Hold the shift button on the keyboard while right-clicking the EventSentry desktop icon to bring up the "run as another user" menu item and then choose to run as another user. Enter the account name and password that you used for the EventSentry Heartbeat Monitor service settings in step 1.

3) Right-click a computer that is joined to a different domain and choose "Set Authentication". You can right-click a group instead if all of the computers in the group are members of the same domain, since the same account should work on all of them. Click the + button in the authentication screen to provide an account name and password for an account that has administrator rights on the remote computer. Please use the syntax domainname\accountname for domain accounts and computername\accoutname for non-domain accounts. Click Add when you're done providing the account information.

4) Repeat step 3 again on the other computers that are joined to different domains or workgroups. If the other computers share the same administrator-rights account as an authentication you have already set up, you can just make sure the green check mark appears on that authentication listing; click the listing to enable/disable the green check mark as needed. If the other computers require a different account name and password for administrator rights, click the + button to provide a new authentication set and then make sure the correct authentication listing for that computer has the green check mark next to it, click the listings to enable/disable the check marks as necessary. Whatever you do, do not click the - button to remove an authentication listing unless none of your computers will use that authentication set.

5) Once you are done setting all of the authentication for computers that are on different domains, you can close the EventSentry management console and then double-click it normally to resume using the management console again. You only have to launch the program specially as in step 2 when you are adding, changing, or configuring authentications.

6) If you have any computers that are not joined to ANY domain, you will need to update a registry setting on those computers (https://www.eventsentry.com/kb/253) and reboot before the authentication will work.

7) Each user who deploys agents, upgrades agents, or pushes configurations will need to set the authentication passwords while they are logged onto the EventSentry server and have the EventSentry management console open. This is because the authentication passwords are encrypted and stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER directory of the registry and are only accessible to the currently-logged-on user. Once you have set up authentication initially by following steps 1 through 6, the account name portions of the authentication settings will all be present but the passwords will be blank each time a new user opens the EventSentry management console. The user will need to re-type the password for each authentication set and then save the EventSentry settings.