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.
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.
Advanced VM management (distributed)
Use advanced VM management if the BigFix server cannot connect to some of the VM managers because they are in separated networks. This approach requires that you install an additional VM Manager Tool. You can manage distributed VM managers from the user interface or, alternatively, configure them manually through configuration files and the command line.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 11 Inventory Documentation
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.
BigFix Platform Documentation
BigFix Scanner (New)
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.
Catalog Overview
This section provides information about catalog updates available with every release.
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.
- Software Scan Status
- 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.
  - Default PVU counting on x86 processors
    To properly calculate PVU subcapacity, BigFix Inventory requires information about the number of processor cores that are available to virtual machines and on the physical computers that host these machines. If the information is not available, license metric utilization cannot be properly calculated and reported results might be over-counted for x86 processors.
  - Supported virtualization types
    BigFix Inventory requires that connections to VM managers are defined for the following virtualization types: Kernel-based Virtual Machine, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, and Xen.
  - Flow of capacity data from VM managers
    To understand how capacity data is gathered in virtual environments, see what data flows between virtual machines, VM Manager tool, and the BigFix Inventory server, and how frequently it is transferred.
  - Basic VM management (central)
    Use basic VM management if the BigFix server can connect to VM managers in your infrastructure. It is the default method of configuring connections to VM managers through the BigFix Inventory user interface.
  - Advanced VM management (distributed)
    Use advanced VM management if the BigFix server cannot connect to some of the VM managers because they are in separated networks. This approach requires that you install an additional VM Manager Tool. You can manage distributed VM managers from the user interface or, alternatively, configure them manually through configuration files and the command line.
    - Deployment scenarios
      Before you proceed to advanced VM management, review the available scenarios for which you can use the additional instance of VM Manager Tool. The main purpose is to transfer the capacity data from VM managers that are in separated networks, but you can also balance the network traffic, or filter your virtual machines based on their UUIDs.
    - Installing additional VM Manager tool
      To connect to VM managers that are in separated networks, you must first install an additional VM Manager tool. You can install it directly from the VM Manager Tools panel in BigFix Inventory, or alternatively by using a fixlet in the BigFix console.
    - Uploading collected data
      After you install additional VM Manager Tool, schedule the regular uploads of collected data. This action is required so that the capacity data that is collected by VM Manager Tool is uploaded to the BigFix server.
    - Adding VM managers
      In advanced VM management, you can add distributed VM managers directly from the BigFix Inventory user interface by selecting a VM Manager tool installation and specifying the VM manager details. Alternatively, you can add VM managers manually by creating configuration files.
    - Running VM Manager tool
      After creating configuration files for your VM managers, you must run the VM Manager tool to load the configuration, test connections, and check the status of VM managers.
    - Additional configuration
      Additional configuration tasks are intended to give you more control over VM Manager Tool. You can use them to customize the VM Manager Tool, or to enable filtering of virtual machines based on their UUIDs. All of these tasks are optional.
  - Collecting capacity data from virtualization hosts for Xen and KVM
    For Citrix, Xen and KVM, connection to the VM manager does not have to be defined in BigFix Inventory to collect capacity data. The data can be collected directly from virtualization hosts by using the Run Capacity Scan on Virtualization Hosts task.
  - Maintenance tasks
    You can perform additional maintenance and troubleshooting tasks on VM Manager Tool. These tasks are not limited to a specific approach to VM management, but can be applied to any instance of VM Manager Tool.
  - Best practices for configuring VM managers
    Apply the best practices when configuring VM managers to ensure that your infrastructure works efficiently.
- 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.
- 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.
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
DataFlow ServiceNow Integration
Service Graph Connector Integration

Advanced VM management (distributed)

Use advanced VM management if the BigFix server cannot connect to some of the VM managers because they are in separated networks. This approach requires that you install an additional VM Manager Tool. You can manage distributed VM managers from the user interface or, alternatively, configure them manually through configuration files and the command line.

You can use advanced VM management as an extension of the basic configuration. VM managers to which the BigFix server can connect can still be managed in the BigFix Inventory user interface. Additional VM Manager Tool instances manage only VM managers for which a direct connection from the server cannot be established.

Both central and distributed VM managers are visible on the VM Managers panel. You can add, edit, delete, and test connections for distributed VM managers directly from the user interface. When you add or edit a distributed VM manager, you select the VM Manager tool installation to which the connection is associated.

As an alternative or advanced method, you can still configure distributed VM managers by creating configuration files and managing the connections in the VM Manager tool command line.

Regardless of the configuration method, capacity data from distributed VM managers is uploaded to BigFix Inventory and updated on reports in the same way as for the basic configuration. Additional VM Manager tool instances can be installed on any computer that can connect to separated VM managers, and you can deploy as many of them as you need.

Note: The visibility of VM managers and the available management actions depend on your user permissions and the computer groups to which you are assigned.

The advanced VM management also gives you the following benefits:

Balancing the network traffic by distributing it between multiple VM Manager Tools
Collecting capacity data only for selected virtual machines (UUID-based filtering)