PEM Administrator FAQs

The Agent automatically connects to the PEM Administrator whenever the desktop system is running and the SMDS location has been configured. This configuration can be set either in the Windows Registry or settings.json file. The Agent will also try to reach out to pkwareops.<domain>/mds. It will get authenticated using the configured connector (Active Directory or Azure Active Directory) to establish a secure connection to the PEM Administrator.

Run command /usr/pkware/pkzip/bin/pkagent --config --interactive in the Linux terminal.  This will run a setup script that will prompt the user to provide the required information such as, path of the PEM Administrator and user credentials.

PK Protect requests Windows to honor the performance policy when a device is added to it. If the performance policy is not honored, then Windows may have a policy that will take precedence and override the requested performance policy.

Perform the following steps to setup Windows Service for Lockers:

1. Log in to the host as the service account or user that will run the locker service. 

2. After connecting to the PEM Administrator, right-click on the PK Protect icon in the system tray and select Options >  Lockers > Configure Service. You will be prompted to provide the credentials. The service will be created and started as the specified user.

Perform the following steps to reconfigure the Windows Service:

1. Open the run dialog box and type ‘services.msc’ to open the Service window. Locate the ‘PK Protect service for <UserName>’ in the list of services. Right-click on it and select Stop to stop the service.

2. Copy the complete service name and open command prompt as an administrator.

3. Run ‘sc delete <complete name of the service>’ and press enter to execute the command.

4. Open %localappdata%\PKWARE as the user that was configured for the service.

5. Delete the ‘PKProtectService’ folder and ‘scsvc.log’.

6. Log in to the host as the service account or user, right-click on the PK Protect icon in the system tray and select Options > Lockers > Configure Service.

To force the Agent to pick up policy changes immediately, hold down the Shift button and right-click on the PK Protect icon in the system tray and select the Sync Now option.

Contact the technical support team at PKWARE to get the installers.

Appliance: Obtain the OS upgrade and PEM upgrade archive from the PKWARE technical support team. In PEM Administrator, navigate to System > Status and click the Update button from the System Update section. Run the OS upgrade first and then the PEM upgrade on the primary server. After that, upgrade all the cluster members.                                                  

Windows: Obtain the upgrade archive from PKWARE technical support team. Extract the content and run the install.bat file. This will launch PowerShell and run the upgrade script.

If the PEM Administrator is part of a cluster, you can perform the upgrade during working hours. The other cluster members will continue to handle the traffic while the primary PEM Administrator is being upgraded.

Listed below are few reasons why a user is unable to log in using a specific sign-in method.

1. The PEM Administrator may not be configured to authenticate with the provided method.

2. If the user has recently changed the Windows password, the system might not have been updated with the new information, leading to login failures. You need to re-enter the credentials for the Agent.

To create the support archive, hold down the Shift button and right-click on the PK Protect icon in the system tray and click the Create Support Archive option.

An upgrade can be distributed like any other software upgrade for the system as propagated by a system administrator. The agent software is installed on top of the existing installation, in order to upgrade the client. Alternatively, a deployment can be set up in the PEM Administrator. 

Under Archive > Deployments, the deployment can be set up by clicking the Add button. The Deployment Package is selected by browsing to where the json file is stored, and a Comment can be made with whatever notation is appropriate for your system policy.

Click Save to set up the deployment.  If you want to target specific devices, it can be done by clicking the Manage icon which will appear after the deployment is saved.