Link Agents to a Cluster

Required user role when using Tenable Nessus Manager: Administrator or System Administrator

Depending on your cluster group configuration, you can link an agent to a parent node or a child node. Usually, Tenable recommends linking to a parent node. However, linking to a child node may be helpful if you have geographically distributed cluster groups and want to ensure that an agent is linked to a particular cluster group.

For general information about clusters, see Clustering.

Before you begin:

Get Linking Key from Node. You need the node's linking key for the agent link command's --key argument.

To link an agent to a parent node:

In this scenario, the agent links to the cluster's parent node, receives a list of child nodes, and attempts to connect to a child node within the cluster.

Log in to the Tenable Agent from the command terminal.
At the agent command prompt, use the command nessuscli agent link with the supported arguments to link to the parent node.

For example:

Linux:

/opt/nessus_agent/sbin/nessuscli agent link

--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00

--name=LinuxAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

macOS:

# /Library/NessusAgent/run/sbin/nessuscli agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=MyOSXAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

Windows:

# C:\Program Files\Tenable\Nessus Agent\nessuscli.exe agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=WindowsAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

To view a list of the supported agent-linking arguments, see Nessus CLI Agent Commands

To link an agent to a child node:

In this scenario, the agent links to a child node in a specific cluster group and receives a list of all the child nodes within that cluster group. The agent then attempts to connect to a child node within the cluster group.

Log in to the Tenable Agent from the command terminal.
At the agent command prompt, use the command nessuscli agent link with the supported arguments to link to the child node.

For example:

Linux:

/opt/nessus_agent/sbin/nessuscli agent link

--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00

--name=LinuxAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

macOS:

# /Library/NessusAgent/run/sbin/nessuscli agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=MyOSXAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

Windows:

# C:\Program Files\Tenable\Nessus Agent\nessuscli.exe agent link
--key=00abcd00000efgh11111i0k222lmopq3333st4455u66v777777w88xy9999zabc00
--name=WindowsAgent --groups=All --host=yourcompany.com --port=8834

To view a list of the supported agent-linking arguments, see Nessus CLI Agent Commands