Machine Agent vs Scout
Machine Agent for servers, Scout for endpoints, one shared estate — purpose, activity ceiling, deployment and the one place the two now genuinely differ: Scout is enrollment-only, the Machine Agent still supports an ingest api_key.
machine-agentscoutcomparisonserversworkstationsestateinventoryapi-keyenrollmentx-agent-kind
Two collectors, two classes of device
VerOps has two inventory collectors because there are two classes of device, not because the data lives in two places. Both feed one governed estate.
- The Machine Agent is the server agent — logs, host metrics, command execution, and (optionally) server software inventory. It runs on Linux and Windows servers.
- VerOps Scout is the lightweight agent for user endpoints — desktops, laptops, workstations — adding signals that only make sense there: foreground focus and per-application bandwidth.
Comparison
| Machine Agent | VerOps Scout | |
|---|---|---|
| Target device | Servers (Linux / Windows) | Desktops, laptops, workstations |
| Primary job | Logs, host metrics, command execution | Software usage inventory |
| Platform protocol | Direct HTTP/JSON, /api/machine/agents/* (not OTLP) |
Direct inventory HTTP/JSON |
| Inventory | Optional module, off by default — VerOps Scout v0.4 inventory contract (report schema v2) | Its core purpose |
| Activity ceiling | Level 2 (CPU/network) — no foreground | Level 3 (foreground) + bandwidth |
| Core auth | Connection key (X-Machine-Key); the inventory module enrolls separately for a per-device key, and an ingest api_key is still supported there |
Enrollment only since v0.6.0 — a limited-use token exchanged for a revocable per-device key. An ingest key or user login in the config makes the agent refuse to start |
| Reports into | The shared governed estate | The same shared estate |
Which collector?
| Device | Collector |
|---|---|
| Server (Linux / Windows) | Machine Agent — enable the inventory module for software inventory |
| Desktop / laptop / workstation | VerOps Scout |
| Tablet / iPad | Ingest via MDM |
The one place they now genuinely differ: Scout v0.6.0 removed org-wide API-key authentication and will not start with anapi_keyin its config. The Machine Agent (v0.5.0) still supports one — do not carry that change across. The platform separates the two by theX-Agent-Kindheader each product sends.
See also: The Scout side of this comparison lives under Scout vs the Machine Agent.