Creating a Remote Office

'Remote Office' refers to either to a local office or branch office which is located in a remote location. You can create more than one remote office even within the local office for management ease.

Communication across these remote offices is possible in two ways:

1. Through Distribution Server(DS)
2. Direct Communication-Roaming User

Remote office creation with DS

Distribution Server is a component that is designed to optimize the bandwidth consumed due to distributing agents across various remote computers via the internet and the scheduled tasks such as wake on LAN and remote shutdown. Distribution server allows you to download the agent specific for the particular remote office and replicates/distributes it to the computers using LAN. Hence the bandwidth consumption is reduced whenever a distribution server is used. Assume there is a new wake on LAN task scheduled for the specific location, and there are 1000 computers in the remote office. The Distribution Server communicates with your Remote Access Plus server acquires the task/agent installable and have it locally distributed to all the 1000 computers in the particular remote office. You will have to choose the computer which will act as a distribution server and download the distribution server component from the product. You can also choose to install the Distribution Server and the agents automatically.

To create a remote office, you must follow the steps given below,

1. From your Remote Access Plus console, navigate to Agent tab -> Remote Offices -> Add Remote Office
2. Specify a name for the remote office. For example, Add RO.
3. Select Through Distribution Server(DS) and enter the following details such as the domain NETBIOS name, name of the computer in which you want to install your Distribution Server, the IP address, FQDN/DNS name.
4. Once you are done with this configure the Replication Policy that you would like to associate with the remote office. You can also create new replication policy that suits your need and have it associated. Replication policy gives you granular control by letting you define when, and at what rate the agent installables and the scheduled tasks should be replicated to your Distribution Server from your Remote Access Plus server.
5. Configure Proxy.
6. Click Add Computer(s) and add the computers in which you want to install the agents, and select add. (This is optional)

To install the Distribution Server and the remote office specific agents on the computers, refer here.

You've now installed agents in the computers in a remote office in your network. These computer names will automatically get added to the list of computers that you're managing.

Remote office creation without DS-Roaming Users

The roaming agents will directly contact the Remote Access Plus server (Direct Communication). These agents download the scheduled tasks individually from the server. Hence the bandwidth consumption is more in case of roaming users. Here you may find the information required to manage computers belonging to roaming users. Follow the steps given below to create a remote office that communicates directly with the Remote Access Plus server.

1. From your Remote Access Plus console, navigate to Agent tab -> Remote Offices -> Add Remote Office
2. Specify a name for the remote office. For example, Add Roaming Users.
3. Select Direct Communication.
4. Select Data Transfer rate. 
5. Configure proxy. The agent needs proper proxy settings to communicate with your server.
6. Click Add Computer(s) and add the computers in which you want to install the agents. (This is optional)
7. Click Add. 

To install the agent on the computers of roaming users, refer here.

When these roaming users connect to the Internet, the Agent installed on their computers will contact the Remote Access Plus server to gather information about the tasks available, once in every 90 minutes.