Install and Run an Agent
The Agent is a core component of the platform and enables cross-network communication between Source Systems and Virtual Data Platform. The following guides you quickly through the required steps to install and run an instance of an Agent. For a quick and proof-of-concept (PoC) like start, we recommend installing the agent as a Windows service on a local PC. For more conceptional details about the Agent please refer to the Agent section. For a more practical guide about how to install, run and update Agents, please refer to the section in the Portal where all of these tasks can be done.
Create a Location
Before being able to install an Agent it is required to define at least one Location. In order to create a new Location, open the Portal and navigate to the menu 'Locations & Agents' and click on 'New Location'. A window pops up where you can configure the location as follows:
Give your Location a descriptive name. Optionally you can specify additional address details. After saving, you will be able to create Agents for this Location.
Initiate an Agent
Before a new agent can be created, one has to create an Agent Group which comprises several single Agents. It can be created in the same menu as the Locations. Select the Location where the Agent has to be assigned to and click on 'New Agent Group'.
Again define the Agent Group by using a descriptive name. Select 'C#' as generic type, since this is the only available kind as of now. After saving, a 'DEFAULT' instance will appear automatically on the right side in the 'Instances' window. You can add additional instances of an Agent for example if you want to scale Agent performance.
Install and Run an Agent
In order to install and run an Agent click on its name. In our case this should be the 'DEFAULT' instance.
The authentication and data encryption for the communicating with VDP is based on a certificate. Before running an agent, make sure that this is installed correctly. It can be downloaded by clicking on 'Download Certificate' in the 'Certificates Window' on the right.
The certificate's password is required when adding the certificate to the systems certificate store. The password can be found directly below the download button. In addition, please make sure, that the user which is used to run the agent has read permissions for the private key of the certificate. For more details directly refer to the section install certificates.
After installing the certificate, now finally the Agents binary can be executed. To get that done, download the appropriate Agent's binary in the window 'Runtime bundles' depending on your operational system. The binary has to be executed on a system which has access to the network where the required source systems are located. As already mentioned, for an initial POC, we recommend to just download the Windows Agent and run it on your local PC.
The agent comes within a zipped bundle, which can be extracted as usual. The following command starts the Agent as a Windows-Service by running the binary file. Make sure that you are in the folder where the Agent and the Powershell script are located when executing it via:
./InstallVDPWindowsService.ps1
Please note that this script must be executed from an admin PowerShell, and the PS-Exec policy must be set to 'Unrestricted' beforehand. For more details directly refer to the section install certificates.
To use a PowerShell session with 'Unrestricted' PS-Exec policy, you can use option -ExceutionPolicy when starting PowerShell. The setting will then only affect the current session:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
The Agent checks for new updates of Query Handlers and updates them automatically. So, when you execute it for the first time, it will take some seconds until all handlers are downloaded and up to date.
Now you can start to configure your first Function to load data from a Source System. In order to retrieve data via Virtual Data Platform the Agent should always be running.