How to install Desktop Central Agents on Microsoft Azure?

Desktop Central can be used to manage machines that come under the Azure AD. To manage such machines, installing the Desktop Central agent is necessary. This document explains how this can be done.

The agent installation in an Azure AD environment can be done in two ways:

• Microsoft Intune Service with storage account

Prerequisites:

• Microsoft Storage Account
• Microsoft Intune Subscription

Steps:

To install the agents using the Intune service, follow the steps given below.

Create a Storage Account:

1. In the Azure portal, select All services.
2. In the available list, Select Storage Accounts and click on the Add option.
3. Select the Subscription to create the storage account.
4. Under the Resource group field, select Create New (If you already have resource group, then choose it from the existing resource group drop down menu). Enter a name for the new resource group, as shown in the following image.
    



5. Select a location for your storage account, or use the default location.
6. Leave the following fields set to their default values:
    

Field	Value
Deployment Model	Resource Manager
Performance	Standard
Account Kind	StorageV2 (general-purpose v2)
Replication	Read-access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS
Access Tier	Hot



7. Select Review + Create to review your storage account settings and create the account.

Create a Blob and Upload Agent Files:

1. Go to the storage account created.
2. Under the Blob Services, click on Blob
3. Now click the Container button.
4. Provide Name and the public access level as "Blob".
5. Then click the OK button to add the blob.
6. Now, open the Blob created and click on the Upload button to upload the DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst
7. Navigate to the file location and select DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst files which need to be uploaded.
8. Click on Advanced Drop Down List and select the Authentication type as "Account key", select Blob type as "Block blob" and Blob size as required.
9. Now, click Upload button to have the files uploaded.

Modify Script:

1. Go to Storage account->Blob->container (which contains uploaded DesktopCentralAgent.MSI and DesktopCentralAgent.MST files).
2. Copy the URLs of the the above said two files.
3. Then, copy and paste the given text file in a text editor and save it as AgentInstall.ps1.
4. Navigate to the text: "<DesktopCentral_Agent_Msi_URL>" , "<DesktopCentral_Agent_Mst_URL>" in the same file and replace it with the URL of uploaded DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst files.

Initiating Installation Via Intune:

1. Navigate to Microsoft Intune-->Device Configuration-->Powershell scripts and then click on the Add button.
2. Then, provide a Name and click on the Next button.
3. In the Script Settings navigate to the AgentInstall.ps1 file location and click on the Open button.
4. In Assignments, assign the script to all devices or all users or desired groups, depending on the machines that need installation.
5. Then, click on the Next button and review the task.
6. Click the Add button to execute the script.

You have now successfully installed Desktop Central agent on devices in Microsoft Azure AD environment using Intune service.

• Microsoft Intune Service without storage account

Steps

1. From Desktop Central server web console, navigate to Agent --> Agent Installation --> Other methods --> Command Line --> click on Download Agent and extract the contents.
2. From the extracted location, Compress the following files using 7-zip and name this compressed file as dcagent.7z 
   • DesktopCentralAgent.msi
   • DesktopCentralAgent.mst
   • Setup.bat

   Note:

   • Download the Setup.bat file from the following link.
   • Do not use the file that is already present in the Agent folder.
3. Open the following link, copy the contents into a text file and name it config.txt.
4. Download the LZMA SDK package from the following link and extract the contents. Go to the bin folder and locate the file 7zS2.sfx.
5. Create a folder and add the following files to it.
   • dcagent.7z
   • config.txt
   • 7zS2.sfx
6. Open Command prompt with Admin privileges in the same folder and run the command, copy /b 7zS2.sfx + config.txt + dcagent.7z agent.exe
7. An executable file agent.exe will be generated in the same folder.
8. Install the executable agent.exe manually in a test machine that does not have a Desktop Central agent. If the agent installation fails in this machine, follow the steps again. If the installation succeeds, then proceed with the rest of the computer.
9. Download the zip from this link.
10. Extract IntuneWinAppUtil.exe from the zip file.
11. Double click the IntuneWinAppUtil.exe and provide the following input,    
    • Source folder: <directory_of_agent.exe>
    • Setup file: agent.exe
    • Output folder: <output_directory>
    • Do you want to specify catalog folder (Y/N)? : N
12. agent.intunewin will be created in the specified <output_directory>.
13. Use the agent.intunewin app package to perform deployments in Intune.

To configure the app package:

• Install Command : "agent.exe" /S
• Uninstall Command : "agent.exe" /X

(The above are dummy commands that do not affect the installation, and thus cannot be used to uninstall agents.)

• Detection Rule : Manually configure detection rule.
• Rule type : MSI
• MSI product code : {6AD2231F-FF48-4D59-AC26-405AFAE23DB7}
• MSI product version check : No

Now you can deploy the agent through Microsoft Intune to the machines in your network.

• Azure Automation Service

Prerequisites:

• Microsoft Storage Account
• Azure Automation Service

Steps:

To install the agents using the Automation Services, follow the steps given below.

Create Automation Acount:

1. In the Azure portal, select All Services.
2. In the list of resources, type Automation account and Select Automation Account.
3. On the Automation Accounts window that appears, choose Add.




4. In the Add Automation Account, provide the Name and Subscription Details.
5. In the resource group section, select click Create New and provide the details ( An existing resource group can also be selected, if that is preferred).
6. Then click on Azure RunAs Account and Add an account with administrative privilege.
   
7. Click the Create button to finish setting up the automation account.

Create a Storage Account:

1. In the Azure portal, select All services.
2. In the available list, Select Storage Accounts and click on the Add option.
3. Select the Subscription to create the storage account.
4. Under the Resource group field, select Create New (If you already have resource group, then choose it from the existing resource group drop down menu). Enter a name for the new resource group, as shown in the following image.
    



5. Select a location for your storage account, or use the default location.
6. Leave the following fields set to their default values:
    

Field	Value
Deployment Model	Resource Manager
Performance	Standard
Account Kind	StorageV2 (general-purpose v2)
Replication	Read-access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS
Access Tier	Hot



7. Select Review + Create to review your storage account settings and create the account.

Create Hybrid Runbook Worker Group:

Note: The Automation account executes runbooks for virtual machines in azure environment. For non-azure environment, a Hybrid Worker Group should be used.

To create a hybrid worker group:

1. Copy the contents of this script to the worker machine and save it as New-OnPremiseHybridWorker.ps1.
2. The New-OnPremiseHybridWorker.ps1 script requires the following parameters during execution
   • AutomationAccountName (mandatory): The name of your Automation account.
   • AAResourceGroupName (mandatory): The name of the resource group that is associated with your Automation account.
   • OMSResourceGroupName (optional): The name of the resource group for the Log Analytics Workspace. If this resource group is not specified, AAResourceGroupName is used.
   • HybridGroupName (mandatory): The name of a Hybrid Runbook Worker group that you specify as a target for the runbooks that support this scenario.
   • SubscriptionID (mandatory): The Azure subscription ID that your Automation account is created in.
   • WorkspaceName (optional): The Log Analytics workspace name. If you do not have a Log Analytics Workspace, the script creates and configures one.
3. On your computer, open Windows PowerShell from the Start screen in Administrator mode.
4. From the PowerShell command-line shell, open the file that contains the script that you downloaded.
5. Change the values for the parameters -AutomationAccountName, -AAResourceGroupName, -OMSResourceGroupName, -HybridGroupName, -SubscriptionId, and -WorkspaceName.
6. Then run the following PowerShell command script:
   " .\New-OnPremiseHybridWorker.ps1 -AutomationAccountName -AAResourceGroupName -OMSResourceGroupName -HybridGroupName -SubscriptionId -WorkspaceName"
   (When a prompt to install NuGet and a prompt to authenticate with your Azure credentials appears, click agree to install the software and fill in the AzureAD credentials).
7. After the script is finished, the Hybrid Worker Groups page shows the new group and the number of members (If it's an existing group, the number of members is incremented). You can select the group from the list on the Hybrid Worker Groups page. On the Hybrid Workers page, you see each member of the group listed.

Note: By configuring SoM policy, the following can be acheived:

• Operations Management Suite (OMS) is only used to install and maintain the management agent and to monitor the functionality of the worker. The delivery of runbooks and the instruction to run them are performed by Azure Automation.
• Log Analytics Workspace service and Automation Account should be linked to track the changes made in hybrid workers. To link them, follow the steps given below:
  1. Go to Automation Account and click on Inventory under configuration management
  2. Select the concerned Log Analytics Workspace, Log Analytics Workspace Subscription and Automation Account and click on Enable.



 

Create a Blob and Upload Agent Files:

1. Go to the storage account created.
2. Under the Blob Services, click on Blob
3. Now click the Container button.
4. Provide Name and the public access level as "Blob".
5. Then click the OK button to add the blob.
6. Now, open the Blob created and click on the Upload button to upload the DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst
7. Navigate to the file location and select DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst files which need to be uploaded.
8. Click on Advanced Drop Down List and select the Authentication type as "Account key", select Blob type as "Block blob" and Blob size as required.
9. Now, click Upload button to have the files uploaded.

Modify Script:

1. Go to Storage account->Blob->container (which contains uploaded DesktopCentralAgent.MSI and DesktopCentralAgent.MST files).
2. Copy the URLs of the the above said two files.
3. Then, copy and paste the given text file in a text editor and save it as AgentInstall.ps1.
4. Navigate to the text: "<DesktopCentral_Agent_Msi_URL>" , "<DesktopCentral_Agent_Mst_URL>" in the same file and replace it with the URL of uploaded DesktopCentralAgent.msi and DesktopCentralAgent.mst files.

Create Runbook :

1. Go to Automation accounts in the Azure portal.
2. In automation account tab, go to process automation and open runbooks.
3. Now, click on Add a Runbook.
4. Provide Name for the runbook and select Runbook type as PowerShell.
5. Click the Create button.




6. Now, open the runbook and click on the Edit option.
7. Copy and paste the contents from AgentInstall.ps1 script to the runbook.
8. Save and Publish the runbook.
9. On clicking the start button, a prompt will appear. Select the Hybrid Worker Group option.
10. Now select the Group in which the DesktopCentralAgent needs to be installed.
11. Clicking the OK button will initiate the installation process.

You have now successfully installed Desktop Central agent in a Microsoft AzureAD environment.