Specifications

Agent Handlers

Agent Handlers co-ordinate work between themselves and the McAfee ePO server that communicates

with the remote Agent Handlers. Agent Handlers use a work queue in the SQL database as their

primary communication method. The Agent Handlers check the work queue frequently and perform

the requested action.

Agent Handlers overview

Users have many questions about Agent Handlers and they are answered in the McAfee Agent

Handlers white paper.

In ePolicy Orchestrator 4.0 and earlier versions, there was a single McAfee ePO server that agents

could connect to and receive policy and task updates. Since the McAfee ePO server was responsible for

handling every agent connecting to it, there was a limitation on the deployment size a McAfee ePO

server could handle. A single McAfee ePO server could scale:

• Vertically using bigger and faster hardware

• Horizontally using more servers to distribute the load

Agent Handlers were introduced in ePolicy Orchestrator 4.5 to allow you to grow your logical ePolicy

Orchestrator infrastructure horizontally, adding multiple Agent Handlers to scale agent connectivity.

Agent Handlers allow you:

• To scale your McAfee ePO server if it is overloaded handling the agent request volume

• Fail-over protection if you want agents to fail over between multiple physical servers and you do

not want to cluster the McAfee ePO server

• To use topology features to manage your systems behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) or

in an external network

The Agent Handler must have a high bandwidth connection to the central

ePolicy Orchestrator database.

To understand what Agent Handlers do, it's important that you also understand their limitations. Agent

Handlers require constant communication back to the SQL database that ePolicy Orchestrator uses.

They check the McAfee ePO server database work queue approximately every ten seconds to find what

tasks they need to perform. This is one of the reasons that each Agent Handler needs a relatively high

speed, low latency connection to the database.

Do not use Agent Handlers to replace repositories. A repository is a simple file share meant to keep

update traffic local. While an Agent Handler has repository functionality built in, it has much more

intelligence and requires constant communication back to the SQL database. This constant

communication can saturate the WAN link.

McAfee

ePolicy Orchestrator

4.0 and 4.5 Best Practices Guide