User ID agent on Vista/Win7

[bwmillslg]

Is there a timeline available for when the User ID agent will work on Windows 7?  I need to plan a rollout of new PC's early next year, and I need to know if they are going to need downgrades to XP for any length of time.  I know that the captive portal should still work, but not having to authenticate was a big plus in getting buy in for the new firewalls.

Thanks,

Bill

[mjacobsen · Accepted solution]

There should not be any issue identifying users on Vista or Windows 7 machines. The statement of supported platforms for the User Identification Agent is independent of the platform the users are running as the agent does not run on the end-user PCs. It runs on the Domain Controllers or on a machine that can connect to the Domain Controllers to get user information.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[bwmillslg]

That makes so much more sense, thank you!  I was under the impression that the agent ran on every user's desktop.  It's even better than I thought!  :smileygrin:

[MarkB]

I'm glad I stopped by!

My concern was, 'Does the agent have to run on every pc on the network?'

Now it is obvious that it runs on a machine, not every machine.

(I wish the admin guide (pdf) would be updated to reflect that.)

Thanks!

[ksalustro]

Hi Mike,

If the IT person doesn't want to put the agent on a domain controller, but rather on a PC to query the DC.

Does the agent support other platforms besides XP and Server 2003?

Server 2008/Vista/Win7 32-bit/Win7 64-bit?

Thanks,

-Keith

[kamish]

The agent can be one any computer on the network that can talk to the Domain Controller or where ever the Active Directory server is.

For instance, I placed our agent on a virtual machine with Windows Server 2008 on it.

Hope this helps.

[kamish]

the agent does support all platforms that you stated.  however, if you place the agent on a server 2008 machine you have to be logged into that machine as the local admin account to that machine in order to get the service to run.  I am a domain admin on my network, and it doesn't allow me to start or stop the service.  This can be annoying as I spent about an hour on the phone with support to get this accomplished!  on XP it will run with any account that is an admin account, doesn't have to be a localadmin account.

The agent can query any machine as long as the ip associated to each machine is within the domain in which the domain controller is polling.

[ksalustro]

Thank you for that info, kamish!