Using non-standard ports for Agent-Server communications with ZENworks Patch Management

  • 7000125
  • 17-Apr-2008
  • 30-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell ZENworks Patch Management 6.4 - ZPM6.4 Server Internet Information Services - IIS
Novell ZENworks Patch Management 6.4 - ZPM6.4 Agent
Novell ZENworks Patch Management 6.3 - ZPM6.3 Server Internet Information Services - IIS
Novell ZENworks Patch Management 6.3 - ZPM6.3 Agent

Situation

Restrictions in your environment mean that you do not want to use port 80 (or 443 if using SSL) for Agent-Server communications

Resolution

If you already have agents deployed, take care when following these instructions to ensure that you do not interrupt communications for existing agents.

There are four steps to ensuring that you are able to use a non-standard port:
  1. Configure IIS, so it uses the new, non-standard port
  2. Configure the Update Server Storage value
  3. Update existing agents to use the new port
  4. Ensure new agent deployments use the new port
These four steps are detailed below

1. Configuring IIS to use a non-standard port for Agent-Server communications

Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager on the ZENworks Patch Management server.
Browse to the web site Novell ZENworks Patch Management Server, right click and choose Properties
On the Web Site tab, click Advanced
When changing the port, you have two options:
a) Replace the current port with the new one: this will switch the system to using the new port, but existing agents, set to use the "old" port, will lose communication until they are updated. To do this, click on the existing port, then click edit. Replace the value and click OK. Click OK on each of the windows until you get back to the IIS Manager.

b) Add the new port, keeping the old port temporarily: this leaves the existing port in use whilst you update. To do this, click add, and in the TCP Port field, type the value of the port you want to use, and click OK.Click OK on each of the windows until you get back to the IIS Manager. Once you have updated all your agents to use the new port, you can go back and remove the original, standard, port

2.Configuring the Update Server Storage value

Look at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PatchLink.com\Update\ISAPI\STORAGE1
the value "server" should have value data of http://<servername>:9955/UpdateStorage/%A%/%P%/ so change this if necessary

3.
Updating existing agents to use the new port

For each existing Agent, the following registry value must be changed for agents to communicate on the new port:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PatchLink.com\Gravitix\Agent\Configuration
DWORD Value: ServerPort
DWORD Data (Decimal): (e.g., 9955)

The ZENworks Patch Management Update service must be restarted for the registry change to take effect

4.
Ensuring new agent deployments use the new port

When installing new Agents, please note the value for the Server URL must include the new non-standard port value. Examples:
http://zpmserver:9955
https://zpmserver:8855






Change Log

Jared Brunson - 11/13/08 - Added 'http:/<servername>:9955' to step 2.Configuring the Update Server Storage value. This TID wasn't working for customers. The new port wasn't being specified in that step to change the server path to show the new port number.
Jared Brunson - 11/14/08 - Forgot a '/' in my previous edit.