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.
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.
Extended discovery of Oracle Database
You can retrieve granular information about the edition (Standard or Enterprise), options, Management Packs (including Oracle Real Application Cluster, RAC), and user concurrent sessions of Oracle Databases that are deployed in your environment. When you combine this information with the collected hardware inventory data, you can use it to calculate the demand for Oracle Database licenses. The functionality is supported for Oracle Database versions 11.2, 12.1, 18.3, 19.0, and 21.0
Coverage of Oracle Licensable Options
Check which Oracle Database editions and which licensable options are supported.

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
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 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 dashboard
  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. The dashboard is also called Inventory Reports.
- 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.
- 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.
  - Discovering Microsoft SQL Server Edition
    It is important to discover an edition of Microsoft SQL Server for measuring the license utilization. When components of SQL Server are installed on Windows, the installer of SQL Server does not put information about edition of this product in the Windows Uninstallation Registry. Initiate Software Scan fixlet collects the edition information from Windows Server configuration stored in Windows Registry. This edition information is added into Windows Package information available in BigFix Inventory and used by signatures for Microsoft SQL Server components.
  - Extended discovery of Oracle Database
    You can retrieve granular information about the edition (Standard or Enterprise), options, Management Packs (including Oracle Real Application Cluster, RAC), and user concurrent sessions of Oracle Databases that are deployed in your environment. When you combine this information with the collected hardware inventory data, you can use it to calculate the demand for Oracle Database licenses. The functionality is supported for Oracle Database versions 11.2, 12.1, 18.3, 19.0, and 21.0
    - Coverage of Oracle Licensable Options
      Check which Oracle Database editions and which licensable options are supported.
    - Discovering usage of Oracle Database features
      To retrieve detailed information about Oracle Database editions, options, and management packs that are used in your infrastructure, use Get Oracle Database Measurements fixlet. When the information is imported to BigFix Inventory, it is displayed on the Oracle Databases report.
    - Handling common situations with extended oracle discovery
      BigFix Inventory version 10.0.11 offers improvements related to serviceability.
  - Discovering Microsoft Exchange edition
    Available from 9.2.6. To retrieve detailed information about Microsoft Exchange servers that are installed in your infrastructure, run the Get Microsoft Exchange Edition fixlet. The data is collected, imported to BigFix Inventory, and displayed in the Software Installations report.
  - Measuring license metric utilization of VMware products
    Available from 9.2.7. BigFix Inventory allows you to retrieve granular information about license metric utilization of VMware vCenter and vSphere in your infrastructure. The resource utilization data is collected by the VM Manager Tool and displayed on the Resource Utilization report.
  - Discovering and measuring SAP
    You can discover components of SAP Business Suite that are installed on Linux and AIX computers in your infrastructure. You can also collect license metric utilization data from SAP landscapes and integrate it with your other resources on the Resource Utilization report. Discovery and measuring are two separate processes that do not impact each other.
  - Assigning components to active BigFix products <deprecated>
- 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.
- Continuous Discovery Processing
  Continuous Discovery Processing is a systematic approach to identifying, analyzing, and integrating new information or insights into an ongoing workflow. This process ensures that organizations remain adaptive and responsive to changes in their environment, enabling them to make informed decisions and maintain a competitive edge. Stay effortlessly up-to-date and enjoy a more streamlined, hands-off experience.
- 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
Service Graph Connector Integration

Coverage of Oracle Licensable Options

Check which Oracle Database editions and which licensable options are supported.

Note: The names of the Licensable Options can be changed by Oracle.

Table 1. Discovered versions and editions of Oracle Database
Oracle Database version	Edition	Supported operating systems	Offering type
21c	Oracle Database Standard Edition and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition	Oracle Database is discovered on the following operating systems. AIX Linux Windows Solaris	On-premises
19c
18c
12c
11g

Note: BigFix Inventory supports Oracle Database Standard Edition and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Other editions for example, Oracle Database Cloud Service Enterprise Edition - Extreme Performance are not supported.

Table 2. Coverage of Oracle licensable options
Licensable Options for the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database	Coverage
Oracle Active Data Guard	Yes
Oracle Advanced Analytics	Yes
Oracle Advanced Compression	Yes
Oracle Advanced Security	Yes
Oracle Database In-Memory	Yes
Oracle Database Vault	Yes
Oracle Label Security	Yes
Oracle Multitenant	Yes
Oracle On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)	Yes
Oracle Partitioning	Yes
Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)	Yes
Oracle Real Application Clusters One Node	Yes
Oracle Real Application Testing	Yes
Oracle Spatial and Graph	Yes
Management Packs	Yes
Total Recall	Yes
Data Mining	Yes
Spatial	Yes
Oracle Change Management Pack	Yes
Oracle Configuration Management Pack	Yes
Oracle Diagnostic Pack	Yes
Tuning Pack	Yes
Oracle Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack	Yes
Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack for Database	Yes
Oracle Data Masking Pack for Oracle and Non-Oracle Databases	Yes
Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Pack for Oracle Database	Yes
Exadata	Yes
WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition	Yes
Database Gateway	Yes

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