Welcome
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.
Server Software Catalog
To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your server software catalog is always up-to-date. Periodically import a new server software catalog that contains the most recent software products. Also, manually add products that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.
Expanding the custom software catalog
To ensure that all software items that are installed in your infrastructure are discovered, create custom signatures. You can create them from scratch or directly from the Package Data and Scanned File Data reports. You can also create extended signatures to discover software that is not detected by using file or package signatures.
Catalog customization process
The process of adding custom signatures to the software catalog requires careful planning and consideration. It starts with identifying products that you expect to discover but are not reported or are missing from the software catalog. To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Next, you should organize your work to ensure that the most important products are given the highest priority. Then, you determine what files or packages can be used to detect the software and report its usage. Finally, you can create the signatures.

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
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 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.
- Collecting Oracle Measurements Data
  Starting from version 10.0.15, BigFix Inventory extends its capability to collect Oracle Java SE measurements data. Since version 10.0.16, BigFix Inventory also collects Oracle Database options and measurements data.
- Vendor-specific predefined reports available in dashboard Inventory Reports
  Vendor-specific predefined reports available in dashboard Inventory Reports provide software discovery and licensing information for specific software vendors of BigFix Inventory customers. These reports help Software Asset Managers manage software for their vendors and prepare for contract negotiations and license audits. To view the reports, click on a vendor in the vendor-specific dashboard.
- Reported license metrics
  BigFix Inventory reports utilization for a number of license metrics for IBM and non-IBM products. It also shows products that are assigned any BigFix metric even if calculating utilization is not yet supported for this metric. It gives you an overview of all IBM metrics for which you should have licenses.
- Software classification
  After new components are discovered, they are assigned to products based on bundling rules. If the initial assignment does not reflect your entitlements, work with the software inventory until it matches the entitlements. To make metric calculation accurate, assign each component to a product, exclude, or suppress the instances that should not be included in the calculation, and confirm your actions. After you confirm the actions, the classification is complete, and the metric calculation is accurate.
- Server Software Catalog
  To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your server software catalog is always up-to-date. Periodically import a new server software catalog that contains the most recent software products. Also, manually add products that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.
  - Updating server software catalog
    The server software catalog is automatically updated during every upgrade of BigFix Inventory. BigFix Inventory Server Software Catalog is refreshed more often than server and you can benefit from the newly connected by updating the server software catalog.
  - Checking product components and their signatures
    You can browse the software catalog to check what components belong to a particular product and what signatures cause that these components are detected.
  - Expanding the custom software catalog
    To ensure that all software items that are installed in your infrastructure are discovered, create custom signatures. You can create them from scratch or directly from the Package Data and Scanned File Data reports. You can also create extended signatures to discover software that is not detected by using file or package signatures.
    - Catalog customization process
      The process of adding custom signatures to the software catalog requires careful planning and consideration. It starts with identifying products that you expect to discover but are not reported or are missing from the software catalog. To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Next, you should organize your work to ensure that the most important products are given the highest priority. Then, you determine what files or packages can be used to detect the software and report its usage. Finally, you can create the signatures.
      - Step 1: Prioritize the work
        Before you start adding custom signatures to the software catalog, prioritize your work. Start with products that are critical from the business perspective. Then, iteratively continue with the remaining products until all software that is used in your company is discovered.
      - Step 2: Analyze your software
        Extend the software catalog only with information that is related to products that are used in your company but are not reported or do not exist in the catalog. Consult the product administrators and available documentation to gather information that is related to the product architecture and licensing model.
      - Step 3: Review information about files and packages
        To identify candidates for software signatures, review information about files and packages that exist on the computer where a particular software product is installed.
      - Step 4: Create component signatures
        Use the following guidelines to avoid common mistakes and to create the most accurate signatures that better recognize software.
      - Template signature to support catalog management
        Starting with version 10.0.9, BigFix Inventory provides two new signature types added in the catalog customization panel.
    - Creating signatures
      You can use the built-in functionality to extend your custom catalog with the software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the HCL® catalog.
    - Creating signatures from package data
      You can use package data to expand your custom catalog. You can add signatures for software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the HCL® catalog.
    - Creating signatures from scanned file data
      You can use scanned file data to expand your custom catalog. You can add signatures for software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the HCL catalog. You identify the file name, or another item of information that can be used to identify the software and add the signature.
    - Adding a new product to software catalog
      The software catalog consists of a list of standard software products. Use the Add Product feature to define a custom product with the accompanying information, such as a publisher name, license metric and release.
    - Assigning an additional metric to a product
      Available from 9.2.8. The pricing calculations are based on the relation between a product and a metric. The software catalog consists of an inventory of standard relations. To define a custom relation, assign one of available metrics to an existing product.
    - Managing license metrics through the UI
      BigFix Inventory allows you to add, modify, and delete metrics through the UI (user interface). You can also perform the same using the REST API, api/sam/v2/metrics as described under Inventory/integration/r_rest_api_for_managing_license_metrics.html.
    - Changing end of support date
      Available from 9.2.11. Set or change the end of support date for your software components to have a comprehensive overview of your software inventory.
    - Software discovery process after customizing the catalog
      Software matching your catalog customizations can be identified in one of the below ways depending on the custom signature.
  - Exporting and importing custom signatures
    You can export custom signatures to an XML file and import them to a different instance of BigFix Inventory to augment you software catalog. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one. You can also import signatures that are published on the signature community or export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community.
- Reports
  Reports provide detailed information about the computers in your infrastructure and the software items that are installed on these computers. By viewing the reports regularly, you can check whether actual installations reflect the software inventory information and ensure that the capacity values are assigned to products correctly. You can decide what type of information you want to display by choosing the appropriate type of report. You can also customize the type and amount of information that is displayed in a report and save the report settings to reuse them.
- Enterprise applications inventory
  Software components are discovered during software scans. The scans correlate data that is collected from the computers with the content of the software catalog, and thus determine whether a component is installed. However, software scans do not discover details of some enterprise applications, for example licensable options of Oracle Database or editions of Microsoft Exchange. The details are discovered by dedicated fixlets. If you are interested in discovering additional details of enterprise applications, run the dedicated fixlets apart from scheduling software scans. Otherwise, running the fixlets is not required.
- License metrics
  BigFix Inventory provides two types of information about license metrics utilization: aggregated utilization and raw utilization. The former shows utilization of the assigned license metric by all instances of a particular product within the reporting period. However, it is limited to a subset of license metrics. The latter shows data that is collected from .slmtag files. It shows raw utilization of all license metrics that can be used by a particular product. The data is not aggregated and requires further processing.
- Contracts management
  The contracts management group shows all contract-related reports in one place. This allows you to easily manage all your contracts.
- Software discovery in containers
  BigFix Inventory supports discovery of software in container images through standard discovery methods that includes catalog signatures, template signatures, installation registry and ISO SWID tags to cover traditional model of software deployment.
- Software data harvesting tool
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.
Tuning performance
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.
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

Catalog customization process

The process of adding custom signatures to the software catalog requires careful planning and consideration. It starts with identifying products that you expect to discover but are not reported or are missing from the software catalog. To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Next, you should organize your work to ensure that the most important products are given the highest priority. Then, you determine what files or packages can be used to detect the software and report its usage. Finally, you can create the signatures.

Periodically import a new HCL catalog that contains the most recent signatures. Also, manually add components that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.

Note: BigFix Inventory is intended for software inventory and license management. It is suggested that you extend the software catalog for those purposes only.

Process input

The input to the catalog customization process is a list of software products that you want to be discovered. The list can be based on the general knowledge of your environment and the procurement data. As the discovery, monitoring, and license management of every software product require extra effort, target products on the basis of license expenses. Focus on a few selected products and adopt an iterative approach instead of trying to work on all products simultaneously.

Required skills

A set of skills that are helpful during the creation of the custom catalog content includes:

General knowledge of the software products that are used in your company, their architecture, and licensing models
General knowledge of the operating systems on which the software is installed

There are two types of the software catalog

Catalog provided by HCL that contains signatures for a range of software from various vendors, such as Microsoft or Oracle. It also includes license information for IBM products and template signatures.
Custom catalog maintained by an end user that contains signatures created manually to discover software for software items not contained in the catalog provided by HCL.

See also, Template signature support for catalog management