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.
The scanner is an independent, well-defined component that is used by BigFix Inventory. It is installed and managed through the BigFix client, and it enables the software and capacity scans. Software and capacity scans collect data that is later on displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports. For environments with up to a few thousand computers, you can enable the default scan configuration. In this case, the analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically on the computers that are subscribed to the BigFix Inventory site. For larger environments, it is advisable to divide the computers into groups and manually configure a separate scan schedule for each group to avoid performance issues.
After you successfully schedule software and capacity scans and the scan data is displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports, you can further customize the scans. For example, you can exclude directories from software scans or scan remote shared file systems.
BigFix Inventory allows you to scan the shared disk on designed endpoint and use the information across all of endpoints. The solution is fully-automated.
Welcome to the BigFix Inventory documentation, where you can find information about how to install and configure BigFix Inventory. The application provides you with information about your inventory and license metrics. You can manage your software assets, gather information about your hardware, and ensure license compliance for your enterprise using BigFix Inventory.
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.
Learn about the requirements and available installation scenarios to ensure that the deployment of BigFix Inventory goes smoothly in your environment.
Each user who has access to BigFix Inventory must be assigned a role and a computer group. The role defines which reports and panels the user can view. The computer group narrows down the scope of these reports and panels to computers that meet certain criteria.
By default, software and capacity scans are scheduled with a frequency that meets auditing requirements. If you want to change the default frequency, ensure that the new setup fulfills the minimal requirements and all considerations.
Default scan configuration is advised for environments with up to a few thousand computers. It ensures that the required analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically. These actions are necessary to collect data from the computers in your infrastructure and to display it on the BigFix Inventory reports. You can enable the default scan configuration during the configuration of BigFix Inventory connections to the databases or when adding another data source.
Manual scan configuration is advised for environments with more than a few thousand computers. It requires that analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled manually after the installation. These actions are necessary to collect data from the computers in your infrastructure and display in on the BigFix Inventory reports. Flexibility of the manual scan configuration allows for avoiding performance issues that might occur when you scan too many computers at the same time.
Available from 9.2.12. Detailed hardware scan collects hardware information related to memory, operating systems, storage, processors, partitions, network adapters, SMBIOS data, IP addresses and logical partition capacity data. The solution is supported on Windows, Linux x86-64 and x86-32, and AIX. It can be run also on other operating systems but the results might not be accurate.
To discover shared disks that are used in your infrastructure, run the Discover Remote Shared Disks task. Then, activate an analysis that gathers the retrieved information. After an import, the information is shown on the Shared Disks report. You can also retrieve it by using the api/sam/v2/shared_disks REST API.
api/sam/v2/shared_disks
Available from 9.2.12. To discover software that is installed on shared disks in your infrastructure, enable automatic scanning of shared disks. As a result, a single computer is designated to scan a specific shared disk and discover the installed software. The data is then automatically populated to all computers on which the same shared disk is mounted. Use this mode when a single shared disk is mounted on many computers.
To discover software that is installed on shared disks in your infrastructure, run the software scan with the Scan remote shared disks option enabled.
To switch from manual scanning of shared disks to automatic scanning, set up the automatic scans. Then, wait for automatic scans to finish successfully to ensure data consistency. Finally, remove computer groups that were created to report software that is discovered on the shared disks.
Available from 9.2.8. To discover software that is installed on shared disks in your infrastructure, create computer groups that contain only computers on which the same disk is mounted. Then, scan one of the computers in that group to create a software template. Finally, share the template between all computers on which the disk is mounted.
Available from 9.2.5. Docker and Podman are platforms that allow automating the deployment of applications inside software containers. BigFix Inventory BigFix Inventory discovers software that is installed inside Docker containers. It also measures license metric utilization of the discovered BigFix products.
Available from 9.2.7. You can discover software and hardware inventory by using disconnected scans that do not require direct connection between the scanned computers and the BigFix server. Scripts that are provided in the disconnected scanner package initiate software and capacity scans, and prepare scan results that you later on upload to BigFix Inventory.
BigFix clients report data to the BigFix server that stores the data in its file system or database. BigFix Inventory server connects to the BigFix server and its database, downloads the stored data, and processes it. This process is called an import or Extract, Transform, Load (ETL). By default, the import runs once a day at midnight. You can schedule it for a period that is most suitable for your environment considering its size and specification.
To properly calculate subcapacity values for products that are installed on Linux on z Systems, create capacity configuration for such computers. First, run a fixlet that creates a file with manually entered capacity values and places it on the target computer. Then, run regular software and capacity scans to discover the installed software and calculate its license metric utilization.
If a computer runs the Solaris operating system and is in the DSD domain, set the DSD mode to ensure that metric utilization is correctly calculated for software that is installed on this computer. If you do not set the DSD mode, Solaris machines in DSD might not be properly identified and metric utilization might be underestimated.
The scanner cache folder is used to store information about scanned files and directories in your file system. By knowing the hierarchy of files, the scanner can locate them quicker, which results in shorter scans. The amount of disk space that is needed for the cache depends on the number of files that are being scanned. If the current location of the cache folder cannot ensure sufficient disk space, you can change the location of the cache folder or optimize the cache.
Analysis properties are used to recognize software and gather information about its usage. Analysis properties are set by default in BigFix Inventory. You can also set up your own properties that you want to use to gather information from the endpoints.
Information about software usage is collected if you enabled the default scan configuration or manually activated the Application Usage Statistics analysis and ran the relevant scan. If you are in the initial deployment phase, or if you do not need information about software usage, you can disable the collection of this information to improve BigFix Inventory performance and shorten the import time.
Available from 9.2.5. You can discover software and hardware inventory on IBM i systems by using disconnected scans that do not require direct connection between the scanned computers and BigFix server. Scripts that are provided in the disconnected scanner package initiate software and capacity scans, and prepare scan results that you later on upload to BigFix Inventory.
You can perform optional configuration tasks to further customize the application.
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.
This section provides information about catalog updates available with every release.
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
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.
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 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.
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
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.
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.
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.
