Welcome
Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Upgrading
The steps to upgrade the BigFix Platform.
Upgrade steps
Things to take into account when planning the upgrade.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 10 Platform Documentation
Welcome to the BigFix Platform documentation, where you can find information about how to install, maintain, and use BigFix.
Detailed system requirements
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Platform guides in PDF format
Following is a list of links to the BigFix Platform user guides in PDF format:
Common Criteria Certification
BigFix 10.0.1.41 complies with the requirements of the standard ISO/IEC 15408 (Common Criteria) v. 3.1 for the assurance level: EAL2
Getting Started
Use this section to become familiar with BigFix infrastructure and key concepts necessary to understand how it works.
HTTPS across BigFix applications
This topic describes how the SSL/HTTPS communication works in BigFix applications and links the tasks on how to configure it.
Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
- Introduction
  BigFix aims to solve the increasingly complex problem of keeping your critical systems updated, compatible, and free of security issues. It uses patented Fixlet technology to identify vulnerable computers in your enterprise. With just a few mouse-clicks you can remediate them across your entire network from a central console.
- BigFix Platform Unicode Support Overview
  BigFix Platform V10 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies.
- Requirements and assumptions
  BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
- Types of installation
  Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
- Managing licenses
  You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
- Before installing
  Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Installing on Windows systems
  Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing on Linux systems
  After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing the clients
  Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
- BigFix Administration Tool
  The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
- Post-installation configuration steps
  After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Managing relays
  Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
- Introduction to Tiny Core Linux - BigFix Virtual Relay
  Follow the step-by-step sequence of operations needed to build the virtual machine, from the downloading of the ISO image to the complete setup and configuration of the BigFix Virtual Relay.
- Setting up a proxy connection
  If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
- Running backup and restore
  You can schedule periodic backups (typically nightly) of the BigFix server and database files, to reduce the risk of losing productivity or data when a problem occurs by restoring the latest backup.
- Upgrading
  The steps to upgrade the BigFix Platform.
  - Upgrade paths to BigFix 10
    The following tables describe the upgrade paths to BigFix 10:
  - Before upgrading
    Things to do before upgrading.
  - Upgrade prerequisite checks
    The following prerequisite checks are automatically run by the upgrade procedure on the BigFix Server.
  - Upgrade steps
    Things to take into account when planning the upgrade.
  - Automatic upgrade
    How to automatically upgrade the BigFix Platform components.
  - Manual upgrade on Windows
    How to manually upgrade the BigFix Platform components on Windows.
  - Manual upgrade on Linux
    How to manually upgrade the BigFix Platform components on Linux.
  - Rollback
    How to roll back your BigFix Server if you made a backup.
- SQL Server parallelism optimization
  The performance of an SQL Server database instance can often be improved by small tweaks. Performance might also be hindered by simple oversights. In fact, some SQL Server parallelism settings have suboptimal default values. Moreover, they have to be re-tuned after an hardware upgrade. Other issues might arise from inadvertent hardware configurations, especially when SQL Server is hosted on a virtual machine (VM).
- Known limitations and workarounds
  This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
- Logging
  This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.
- Uninstalling the BigFix client
  To uninstall the BigFix client installed on the various operating systems, see the following sections.
Configuration Guide
Learn how to configure BigFix according to your needs.
Console Operator's Guide
Learn how to work with the BigFix Console.
Asset Discovery User's Guide
Learn how BigFix Asset Discovery works.
Web Reports Guide
Learn how the Web Reports feature extends the power of BigFix.
WebUI User's Guide
Read this guide for an introduction to the WebUI tools, concepts, and terminology.
WebUI Administration Guide
Read this guide for information about installing and administering the WebUI.
Glossary
This glossary provides terms and definitions for the Modern Client Management for BigFix software and products.

Upgrade steps

Things to take into account when planning the upgrade.

You must upgrade the BigFix Platform components in a specific order.

The following components must be upgraded in rapid succession, in this order:

Primary BigFix Server
Secondary BigFix Servers, if any
BigFix Consoles
Remote BigFix Web Reports servers
BigFix WebUI

The following components can be upgraded at a later time, in this order:

BigFix Relays. If they are configured in a hierarchy, upgrade the top-level ones first.
BigFix Plugin Portal, if any
BigFix Clients

A BigFix Console can only connect and operate if it has the same version as the BigFix Server. You can use a Console to start an automatic upgrade, but you should then close it and you will not be able to use it while the Server upgrades.

Servers, relays, and clients do not need to match versions and the upgrade of these components can occur at different times. Clients with earlier versions can continue to report to later versions of relays or servers, but might not have all the functionality of the later release.

During the upgrade, the versions of the different components must respect this rule: server version >= relay version >= client version

As a best practice, follow the instructions provided in Running backup and restore to make a recovery copy of your BigFix Server environment and to ensure that, if needed, you can run the rollback.

Existing BigFix proxy configurations are automatically migrated to the V10.0 proxy configuration settings and behavior. For more information about BigFix V11.0 proxy configuration settings, see Setting up a proxy connection.

For large deployments, the server upgrade might take several minutes.

After upgrading:

You might experience a slower deployment. The upgrade downtime might create a backlog of client reports and it might take several hours for the BigFix server to process this backlog after the upgrade has been completed.
If users cannot log in anymore, passwords containing non-ASCII characters might have been corrupted. If so, try resetting the password to the same value or to a new one.