Welcome
Managing the infrastructure
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
Removing inactive computers
When you decommission a computer in your infrastructure, it continues to report to BigFix Inventory. The data is still collected from this computer, and displayed on the metric reports. To ensure that all infrastructure changes are reflected in BigFix Inventory, you should remove each decommissioned computer from BigFix. If you cannot remove this computer from BigFix for a valid reason, you can use an alternative solution, and decommission the computer in BigFix Inventory.
Automatically decommissioning inactive computers
Available from 9.2.8. When infrastructure management policy does not allow the deletion of decommissioned BigFix clients in BigFix, you can enable automatic decommissioning of inactive computers directly in BigFix Inventory. By decommissioning the inactive computers you ensure that they do not have negative impact on metric calculation.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 10 Inventory Documentation
Overview
Become familiar with key concepts that are necessary to understand how BigFix Inventory works and learn about features and functions that are introduced in every version of the application.
Installing
Learn about the requirements and available installation scenarios to ensure that the deployment of BigFix Inventory goes smoothly in your environment.
Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
Upgrading
A new version of BigFix Inventory is released periodically, typically at the end of each calendar quarter. Upgrade to the new version regularly to take full advantage of new features and application fixes.
Managing the infrastructure
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
- Computer statuses
  Computer statuses provide information about the condition of the computers that are monitored by BigFix Inventory. To properly discover the installed software and measure its license metric utilization, ensure that computers in your environment work correctly.
- Managing VM managers
  VM managers are pieces of software that create, manage, and monitor virtual machines. You configure connections to VM managers so that BigFix Inventory can gather data that is required to calculate utilization of license metrics in virtual environments.
- Administering the server
  Perform administering tasks on your server to configure advanced settings, or restart its services.
- Administering the database
  Perform administering tasks on your database to keep it in good condition, protect your data, or configure additional settings.
- Removing inactive computers
  When you decommission a computer in your infrastructure, it continues to report to BigFix Inventory. The data is still collected from this computer, and displayed on the metric reports. To ensure that all infrastructure changes are reflected in BigFix Inventory, you should remove each decommissioned computer from BigFix. If you cannot remove this computer from BigFix for a valid reason, you can use an alternative solution, and decommission the computer in BigFix Inventory.
  - Removing inactive computers from BigFix
    When you decommission a computer in your infrastructure, you need to remove this computer from BigFix to reflect the change in the BigFix Inventory reports.
  - Automatically decommissioning inactive computers
    Available from 9.2.8. When infrastructure management policy does not allow the deletion of decommissioned BigFix clients in BigFix, you can enable automatic decommissioning of inactive computers directly in BigFix Inventory. By decommissioning the inactive computers you ensure that they do not have negative impact on metric calculation.
- Managing data sources
  Computers in an organization can be divided into organizational units, and can be monitored by multiple BigFix infrastructures. Each infrastructure is referred to as a data source. Data from multiple data sources can be imported to one instance of BigFix Inventory.
Software inventory and license utilization
You can classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
Managing security threats
Learn how to use BigFix Inventory to manage security threats in your environment. You can view whether any of the installed components is prone to any Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE).
Tutorials
Tutorials help you understand how to use BigFix Inventory. They consist of modules that focus on broad goals. Modules consist of tasks that show how to configure specific settings step-by-step.
Security
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
Troubleshooting and support
Learn about solutions to common problems that might arise when you use BigFix Inventory BigFix Inventory and how to find logs and trace files that help you troubleshoot those problems.
Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
Integrating with REST API
External systems integration is one of the key features of BigFix Inventory. Business logic is enabled for integration and interfaces are provided for common integration points.
Glossary
Guide in PDF format

Automatically decommissioning inactive computers

Available from 9.2.8. When infrastructure management policy does not allow the deletion of decommissioned BigFix clients in BigFix, you can enable automatic decommissioning of inactive computers directly in BigFix Inventory. By decommissioning the inactive computers you ensure that they do not have negative impact on metric calculation.

About this task

Important: To ensure consistency between the BigFix platform and the BigFix applications, it is recommended to manage the entire infrastructure in BigFix. Decommissioning computers in BigFix Inventory is an alternative solution allowed only when decommissioning in BigFix is not possible.

If a computer stops reporting to BigFix, it is considered inactive. Configure BigFix Inventory to automatically decommission computers that are inactive for a specified period.

Note: This solution is not supported on the computers with disconnected scanner. For more information, see: Decommissioning computers with disconnected scanners.

Procedure

Log in to BigFix Inventory.
Go to Management > Advanced Server Settings.
To enable the feature, set the decommission_inactive_computers parameter to true, and click Save.
To set the inactivity period after which the computers are automatically decommissioned, configure the value of max_data_visibility_for_inactive_computers parameter to the required number of days, and click Save. By default, the inactivity period is set to 90 days.

Results

The reports display only the data for the period before the date when the computer was decommissioned.

Note: When a decommissioned computer reactivates and starts reporting back to BigFix, the report data is updated.

What to do next

To disable automatic decommissioning of inactive computers, go to Advanced Server Settings, select the decommission_inactive_computers parameter, and set it to False.