The Site Administrator

The site administrator has the following primary responsibilities.

Obtaining and securing the Action Site Credentials

To install BigFix, the site administrator must generate a private key, receive a license certificate from HCL, and create a masthead with the digital signature and configuration information. This is a special key and must be used only for site-level tasks such as:

• Setting global system options
• Editing Mastheads
• Administering Distributed Server Architecture (DSA)

Preparing the Server

The BigFix Server must be correctly set up to communicate externally with the Internet and internally with the Clients. The Server also needs to be configured to host the BigFix database (or another computer can be used as the SQL Server database).

Installing the various components

The site administrator installs the BigFix Client, Server, Relay, and Console modules, and configures the credentials of the first master operator who will connect to the console to define the license subscriptions, gather content from subscribed sites, and define the BigFix network, the roles and the other operators.

The site administrator sets up and administers multiple BigFix Servers in a Disaster Server Architecture (DSA) for doing automatic BigFix server failover and failback.

Maintaining the Server

The BigFix server runs an SQL Server database and several specific services, such as running the Diagnostic Tool and the Administration Tool. Standard maintenance tasks such as upgrades or fixes are managed using Fixlet technology or can be performed manually by the site administrator.

For day-to-day console operations, the site administrator must create a master operator key.