The Summary Server Cloud architecture allows IT administration team and top leadership employees to collaborate and work from a single platform. The Summary Instance will serve as a centerpiece for all management operations. Tasks, such as patching, configuration, and reporting, can be allocated to technicians through the Management Console.
The architecture is built up with the below components:
Summary Instance is primarily provided for your top leadership staff to generate insights and make informed decisions. This instance can also be used to manage the IT technicians who access Endpoint Central. Users who have access to the Summary instance can also access all Probe instances. A Summary instance will have multiple instances beneath it, enabling the execution of various administrative operations.
The Probe instance provides the core functionality that IT technicians use to perform management operations. Both the Summary and Probe instances are currently hosted within the same ManageEngine data center (for a list of our data centers, go to this page). The Probe Instance will be able to monitor both your old and new devices. Probe instances achieve this through the use of platform-independent notification services.
The distribution server of the Endpoint Central Cloud Probe instance primarily acts as an AD Connector for your network. Check this page to configure AD Connector in your network. In addition, this can be used as a distribution point to streamline the bandwidth rates through your network. Distribution Server can be setup in any one of your remote/branch offices. IT administrators can setup the distribution server with replication policy rules (the data will be replicated from the Probe instance to the distribution server based on this rule). In addition, the distribution server synchronizes with the Endpoint Central Cloud Probe instance for missing patch details. These patches are then downloaded directly from the respective vendor's website and distributed across the branch office agents depending on the status of the missing patches on each computer.
* May increase depending on the number of software applications and patches that are deployed
Endpoint Central, being a domain based approach to your endpoint solution, will sync resources information from Active Directory or Workgroup. In cloud hosted setup, businesses can populate the resource information using AD Connector.
Patch database is a repository hosted in ManageEngine data center. This database contains all the patch information, which will be passed to the central server at regular intervals. For users working from home, the agent installed on their machine will pull the patch information from this database directly and download and install the patches from the vendor websites.
Web Console is the graphical user interface of both the Summary Server and Probe Instances in Endpoint Central. IT administrators and technicians can access the web console anytime, from anywhere, to manage and monitor their devices.
Endpoint Central is tightly integrated with notification services such as Apple Push Notification service (APNs), Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), and Zoho Notification Service to manage mobile devices and implement modern management practices.
Endpoint Central agent is a lightweight software installed on the endpoints that is required to be managed by your IT administration team. This agent is responsible for carrying out the deployed tasks such as installing software/patches, distributing baseline settings, remote troubleshooting, device diagnosis, and more.