Adding and removing agentless nodes

Using the inventory service, you can manage nodes and devices (such as network switches and firewalls) without installing the Puppet agent on them. Node and device information is stored securely in your Puppet Enterprise (PE) inventory.

• Agentless nodes are nodes that don't have a Puppet agent installed on them. They can do things like run tasks and plans, but they do not help maintain your infrastructure's desired state in the way agent nodes do.
• Devices or agentless device are devices, such as network switches or firewalls, that can't have a Puppet agent installed on them. Connecting devices lets you manage these network device and run Puppet and task jobs on them.

The inventory service uses SSH or WinRM remote connections to connect to agentless nodes. To connect to agentless devices, the inventory service uses transport definitions from device transport modules you've installed.

After you add agentless node or device credentials to the inventory, authorized users can run tasks on the agentless nodes and devices without re-entering the credentials. On the Tasks page (in the console), the agentless nodes and devices are listed together with the nodes and devices that have an agent installed.