New Training: Understand Orchestration Processes and Concepts

In this 5-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Shawn Powers covers the concepts of system orchestration. Gain an understanding of DevOps and the difference between agent and agentless configuration management. Learn how to gather data by using DevOps systems and how to deploy an application without installing an underlying operating system. Watch this new CompTIA,Linux training.

Watch the full course: CompTIA Linux+

This training includes:

• 5 videos

• 19 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Understanding Infrastructure Orchestration

• Choosing Agent vs Agentless Configuration Management

• Gathering Information on Inventory

• Using Build Automation

• Learning More About DevOps

Agent and Agentless Operations: What’s the Difference?

In configuration management, data collection and other IT operations, the terms agent-based and agentless get thrown around a lot. But the difference between them can be subtle, and it’s important to have a clear sense of the difference between them.

When you’re talking about computers or software, an agent is effectively a standalone software program that resides on a device. Importantly, they tend to come with additional “costs” like installing, maintaining or upgrading them, maybe even uninstalling them. Many times, that work can be automated from a central location if it’s possible to push that sort of work across a network. But either way, an agent — sometimes called a daemon — is a standalone computer program that performs tasks from a target device.

Agentless operations refer to accomplishing a task without installing a piece of software onto the target device. If you’re collecting data, this might be a program that queries the already installed protocols or products on the device. If you’re managing network configurations, it might be a daemon that pushes updates through pre-existing APIs.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to say which is the “better” approach — there are just too many security, efficiency, cost and performance tradeoffs between agent-based and agentless operations and approaches.