A "Managed Agent" is one that the Agent Manager itself handles the installation of (Discovery, install).  The "Unmanaged Agent" is one you install yourself e.g. running the msi locally.  There's no reason why the installation of the "Unmanaged Agent" can't be scripted or done by some software management solution like Zenworks or SCCM.  But, whatever method you use would require the appropriate rights to do the install.  As would any piece of software.

HI

    Yes...you are correct...but Customer could not provide a high permission account/password to let agent manager to remote deploy manage agent.

But they has other method like powershell or other method could let with high permission to deploy

   But I do not know whether "Managed Agent " has install source like unmanaged agent cold let customer use.

Wencheng

If Sentinel Agent Manager isn't doing the discovery and deployment, then it isn't a Managed Agent.  If the customer can use another method like Powershell etc, then just use the Unmanaged Agent.  That's what it's for.

thanks your informaiton

  But unmanagement seem could not online update from agent management console , still using manual upgrade by MSI package , correct ?

Wencheng

Correct. From the SAM documentation .... "Windows agents that a central computer deploys and manages are called managed agents. Windows agents you manually install and that require manual installation of software upgrades are unmanaged agents."

Don't get too hung up on the term "Managed" as there's not a huge difference between it and the "Unmanaged" agent.  The Managed Agent installs and upgrades are handled by SAM (and obviously rights are required to do that), but there's no reason you can't also automate the installs and upgrades of the Unmanaged Agent yourself.

HI

    Now My Customer planto use agent manager to collect windows event log.

But they hope to reduce the complexity of managing Agents in the future
That is to say, future updates can be updated online
It's just like I mentioned before... Based on the information security policy, their current high-privilege account passwords are processed by privilege management and other software... so they cannot provide a clear high-privilege account password for SAM to use for deployment.

I understand that another unmanaged agent can be installed manually, but we also understand that it cannot be updated online...so it will increase the difficulty of management

Please let me summarize, for the managed agent that can be updated online, the initial installation can only be installed using SAM's Discovery/Deploy.. There is no other way, right?
The other Unmanaged Agent uses manual installation, but its future upgrades can only be upgraded manually. In addition, there is no chance for the unmanaged agent to be converted into a managed agent in place... Is this correct?

What makes the managed agent "managed" is the fact that SAM discovers the host and installs/upgrades the agent on it.  Where rights to perform this installation cannot be provided (such as with your customer), then the unmanaged agent is provided as an alternative.  If you install the unmanaged agent, then that agent is "unmanaged", and there is no conversion to managed.

The Managed Agent is just a way of providing you with a method to automate the install/upgrade of the agent, but as I said, you can acheive the same automation using the unmanaged agent. It's just that you need to put a bit more work in to do that.  FYI - You still need rights to install the unmanaged agent, but it's just you have more control over it.