Agentløse

Agentløse, literally meaning "agentless" in Danish, describes approaches in IT management and monitoring that do not require installing software agents on the target devices. Instead, data is collected via remote access and standard interfaces exposed by the devices or services.

In practice, agentløse monitoring and management rely on protocols such as SSH and WinRM, SNMP, WMI, or REST APIs to query systems, execute lightweight commands, or pull configuration and performance data. Discovery and inventory may also be performed by network scans and API-based metadata. The approach is commonly used to gain visibility with minimal footprint on endpoints and to simplify onboarding in diverse or large-scale environments.

Common use cases include monitoring servers, network devices, databases, and cloud resources where agent deployment is impractical, costly, or undesirable due to security concerns. Agentløse approaches are often contrasted with agent-based methods, which install software on endpoints to collect deeper telemetry and enable more granular control.

Advantages of agentløse approaches include lower maintenance, reduced endpoint overhead, easier onboarding, and potentially faster deployment across extensive or transient environments. Challenges include limited visibility compared to agent-based solutions, reliance on network reliability, credential management, and potential performance impact on the monitored systems. Some data may be unavailable without agents, and securing remote access credentials becomes crucial.

In contemporary IT operations, agentløse techniques are used by many monitoring tools and cloud management platforms, though many environments employ a mix of agentless and agent-based measurements to balance coverage, control, and security.