OPNMGR for administrators: securing and upgrading the manager
For the administrators who own an OPNMGR (OPNManager) server: how agent requests are authenticated (identifier, API key ratchet, HMAC signatures and the policy modes), how secrets are encrypted at rest, how accounts, sessions and the audit trail work, and how to upgrade, roll back and maintain the manager (migrations, version-specific steps, telemetry retention and scheduled jobs).
- Level
- Advanced
- Length
- About 50 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 2 Oct 2026
- OPNMGR · open source
Skills you'll practise
- Explain the three agent credentials, the per-firewall ratchet and why an invalid signature is always refused
- Decide when the fleet can move to prefer_signed or require_signed from the firewall flags, and recover if the policy can't be met
- Describe what is encrypted with the master key, what is hashed, and what that means for a stolen database backup
- Manage staff accounts safely: disable rather than delete, sessions, two-factor and the audit trail
- Upgrade and roll back the manager using the documented procedure, migration rules and version-specific steps
Course outline
- 1.OPNMGR for administrators: securing and upgrading the managerVideo · 2 min
- 2.How agents authenticateLesson · 17 min
- 3.Secrets, accounts and the audit trailLesson · 16 min
- 4.Upgrading and maintaining the managerLesson · 17 min
- 5.OPNMGR for administrators: securing and upgrading the manager: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 17 questions
- 6.Final exam8 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- OPNMGR SECURITY.md: agent authentication, secrets at rest, remote commands, roles, sessions, audit log
- OPNMGR docs/UPGRADING.md: upgrading the server and the agent fleet
- OPNMGR CHANGELOG.md: release-by-release history (3.12.0 to 3.77.2)
- OPNMGR README: compatibility and feature availability, known limitations, upgrading
- OPNMGR database/migrations/README.md: migration rules
- OPNMGR .env.example: configuration template
- MSP Zero: OPNMGR tool page
See it with your own jobs and topics
Tell us about your team and we'll walk you through setup, from choosing jobs to your first skills check.