Architecture

The Cloud plugin architecture helps in understanding and managing a virtualized environment.

The following diagram depicts a visual representation of how Virtual Endpoint Manager is designed to work in your environment.


Cloud plugin architecture

Virtual Endpoint Manager uses the standard BigFix architecture and a Plugin portal.

A Plugin portal is a BigFix relay that has the proxy agent installed on it along with the Cloud Plugins installed and configured.

The Plugin portal sends queries to cloud about their respective endpoints that it controls, and reports information back to the BigFix server. These reports end up as separate computer objects in the BigFix Console. Because no actual BigFix agent is installed on these computers, they are known as proxied machines. From the console, you can send commands such as start, stop, and restart. The Plugin portal passes the commands by communicating with cloud endpoints through the cloud (API).

The properties of endpoints can be discovered with the use of the cloud API. These properties include the IP address, available memory, the BIOS versions, and number of snapshots. See the list of new properties in List of actionscript commands.

When the BigFix Console issues a command, it gets passed down to the plugin portal, which translates this action script into respective cloud API commands. These APIs report back success or failure, and the plugin portal interprets these results and pass them back up to the BigFix relay. The relay passes them back up to the BigFix Server. The status of the commands are reported back to the BigFix Console.

For more information on understanding and managing cloud environments, refer to Understanding cloud setup.