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.
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.
VM Manager tool installation requirements
The computer on which you install the VM Manager tool must meet all software and hardware requirements.

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.
  - 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.
    - VM Manager tool installation requirements
      The computer on which you install the VM Manager tool must meet all software and hardware requirements.
    - Log files
      You can gather the log files to determine the problems that are related to the VM Manager tool. You can also change the log settings.
    - Changing the upload schedule
      Capacity data collected by VM Manager Tool is uploaded to the BigFix server every 12 hours. You can change this schedule by removing the default schedule and creating a new one.
    - Forcing the upload of collected data
      You can force the collected data to be immediately uploaded to the BigFix server. The data is uploaded once and no schedule is set.
    - Checking the VM Manager tool version
      Activate the VM Manager Information analysis to retrieve data about the installed version of VM Manager tool. You can use the analysis to quickly confirm the successful installation of the tool.
    - Updating VM Manager Tool
      You can update VM Manager Tool to the newest version.
    - Uninstalling VM Manager tool
      Follow the procedure to uninstall the VM Manager tool from the endpoints and to delete all the related settings and folders. Uninstallation of the VM Manager tool is also required if you want to reinstall the tool.
    - Backing up and restoring the VM Manager tool
      To avoid losing configuration of VM manager connections due to corruption of VM Manager tool files, back up the /LMT/VMMAN/config/ and /LMT/VMMAN/keydb/ directories. If the VM Manager tool files are corrupted, reinstall the VM Manager tool and restore the two directories from the backup location.
  - 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

VM Manager tool installation requirements

The computer on which you install the VM Manager tool must meet all software and hardware requirements.

Important: Central VM Manager tool must be installed on a BESRootServer. By default BigFix Inventory assumes one BESRootServer per datasource. In case of Distributed Server Architecture (DSA) with multiple BESRootServers per datasource the VM Manager tool must be installed on the BESRootServer with the lowest ID, even if the root server is not the primary root server of the datasource.

Supported operating systems

The VM Manager tool can be installed on any 64-bit version of Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that is supported by the BigFix client or the disconnected scanner. For the list of supported operating systems, see: Detailed System requirements.

Software prerequisites

The following libraries must be available on the computer:

systemd in any version
unzip in any version
glibc library version 2.7 or higher

Required free disk space

The VM Manager tool requires 300 MB of disk space.

Requirements for installing from the VM Manager Tools panel

When you install the VM Manager tool from the VM Manager Tools panel in BigFix Inventory, the target computer must meet the following requirements:

The computer must be running a supported version of Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
A 64-bit architecture is required.
The computer must not already be present on the VM Manager Tools list.
The Install VM Manager Tool fixlet (ID 81) must be relevant on the target computer. BigFix Inventory checks fixlet relevance automatically after you select the computer. If the fixlet is not relevant, the Install with BigFix button remains disabled and an explanatory message is shown.

Note:

The autocomplete suggestions in the VM Manager Tools panel may include 32-bit computers because architecture is not filtered at the suggestion stage. Installation is allowed only when the actual fixlet relevance and hardware requirements are met on the selected computer.