With rapid increase in globalization, most companies have their branch offices spread across different places of the world. Managing the computers in these branch offices effectively is always a tedious job for the system administrators. With Endpoint Central MSP in hand, managing computers in WAN across remote office will turn out to be a much easier process. To manage computers in a remote location you have to add remote offices. You can add and modify the remote offices according to your requirement. Communication across these remote offices is possible by two ways
Through Distribution Server
Direct communication with Endpoint Central server
Distribution server acts as a communication layer between your remote office computers and the Endpoint Central MSP server. It replicates the software and patch binaries from the Endpoint Central MSP server and gives it to the computers in that remote office. The remote office computers, instead of getting the patch and software binaries individually from the Endpoint Central server, gets it from the Distribution server, thus saving your WAN bandwidth. So, it is ideal to use a Distribution Server, if you have a limited WAN bandwidth and if you can afford to keep one computer which should be always running, to serve the purpose of Distribution server. We recommend Distribution server when you manage more than 10 computers in your remote office.
When you choose your communication type as Direct communication, all the remote office computers will get the required data from the Endpoint Central server directly. You can use this option, if you have limited computers in your remote office, say less than 10, or if you do not have any bandwidth limitation.
For managing computers in WAN you have to add a remote office. You can add the remote office directly by selecting the Remote offices tab and clicking Add Remote office. The following points are needed to be taken care while adding a remote office.
As discussed above, decide on the communication type you wish to choose while adding a remote office. Either Through Distribution server or Direct communication.
If you choose the communication type Through Distribution server, it is recommended that you have a dedicated computer for your distribution server and this computer should have static IP address for hassle free communication between the remote office computers and the distribution server.
Select a Replication Policy that meets your need and associate it with the remote office to optimize your bandwidth utilization while transferring large binaries from Endpoint Central server to Distribution Server. Know more on Replication Policy and its significance here
To install Distribution server and WAN agents automatically, under Remote office agent Installation section, ensure that you specify the Domain credentials with administrator privileges to all the computers managed in the remote office.
You can add the computers to be managed either directly by clicking the Add computers option, or by importing a CSV file. For adding multiple computers, the CSV file should contain computer name given in separate lines.
You can also add the remote office by importing a CSV file. For adding multiple remote offices, the CSV file should contain remote office names given in separate lines.
You can also modify the remote office, by clicking the Modify icon, under the Actions column against the remote office you want to modify. If you have modified the communication type from Direct communication to Through Distribution server, you have to install a Distribution server to manage that remote office.