Installing Test Agent Appliances: Introduction

You can install a Test Agent Appliance:

  • on an NFX150 Network Services Platform from Juniper. See this page.

  • on a PC Engines APU2 hardware server. See this page.

  • on a Supermicro hardware server. See this page.

  • on a fitlet2 hardware server. See this page.

  • on x86 hardware of your own to permanently use that hardware as a Test Agent. See this page.

  • on a USB memory for temporary use of a PC where it is inserted. This is suitable for temporary measurements and troubleshooting. See this page for further instructions.

  • on various virtualization platforms. See this page.

The hardware used (including the network interface cards) determines the number of available network interfaces and the link performance. Minimum hardware requirements are stated in the Test Agents datasheet, which is found at https://www.juniper.net/assets/us/en/local/pdf/datasheets/1000684-en.pdf.

Note

No existing or underlying operating system is needed on your hardware – the Test Agent download package includes an optimized real-time Linux operating system.

Prerequisites

  • A wired interface is required for registering Test Agents. Registration cannot be done over Wi-Fi. This means that a hardware device equipped only with Wi-Fi interfaces must be extended with at least one wired interface for the purpose of registration. Once the Test Agent is registered, it can be configured to be managed over a Wi-Fi interface.

  • If you have a firewall in place on the device or in the network, make sure that the Test Agent is allowed to establish an outgoing session towards the Paragon Active Assurance server: in the cloud server case, to https://login.paa.juniper.net using TCP port 443 (Test Agent Appliance); in the on-premise server case, to the host IP using TCP port 6000 (default). You do not need to open any incoming connections, since the Paragon Active Assurance server will communicate in the reverse direction on the same TCP session that the Test Agent initiated.

    • Alternatively, a Test Agent may communicate with the Paragon Active Assurance (cloud) server via an HTTP proxy or via another Test Agent acting as proxy. This makes it possible to do testing in networks that do not otherwise allow any external connections. See this page for instructions.