Managing pending restart states and automated restart of endpoints

When you add a Fixlet, Task, or Baseline to an Automation Plan and if the Fixlet, Task, or Baseline contains an action script that requires the targeted endpoints to restart, this results in your plan remaining in a Pending restart state, until the endpoints are restarted. If the endpoints are not restarted, the step remains in this wait state and the Automation Plan is effectively stalled. Pending restart is a wait state in BigFix, and if the endpoints are not restarted, the Automation Plan cannot progress. To prevent this from happening, add a specific Server Automation Fixlet to your plan to automate the restart of the endpoints and configure the Pending Restart settings to continue the plan.

Some Fixlets, Tasks, and Baselines contain action script that results in the targeted endpoints going into a Pending restart state. The following graphic shows an example of action script that requires a restart.
This graphic shows an example of an action script that requires the endpoints to be restarted.
Some Fixlets and Tasks contain a similar piece of action script, action may require restart. This action script can also result in the targeted endpoints entering a Pending restart state. If your Automation Plan contains steps or failure steps with Fixlets, Tasks, or Baselines that contain this action script, a warning icon is displayed on the Settings tab, indicating that one or more of the steps in the plan contain this action script. You can then move to the Settings tab to configure how you want to manage the Pending restart states. For example, you can choose to continue the plan and add a Fixlet to the plan to restart the endpoints.
Table 1. Pending restart settings Use Fixlet 126 Restart All Endpoints and Wait for Restart to Complete or Fixlet 160 Restart Endpoint on Pending Restart and Wait for Restart to Complete to restart the endpoints.
Option Description
Pause Plan until restart completes This option pauses the Automation Plan until the targeted endpoints are restarted and report success or failure. You must manually restart the endpoints before the plan progresses. Any endpoints reporting Pending Restart status at the point at which a timeout occurs are treated as failures.
Continue Plan When you select this option the step is regarded as successful upon entering the Pending restart state and the plan moves on to the next step, ignoring the actual step status after the endpoints are restarted. Any associated failure step will not run if the step fails after entering the Pending restart state because the step is regarded as successful. You must add a Fixlet to the plan after the step or steps that require a restart. The following list describes how the plan is executed, depending on which Fixlet you use to restart the endpoints when you have selected the Continue Plan option:
Fixlet 126 Restart All Targeted Endpoints and Wait for Restart to Complete
The system restarts all targeted endpoints, whether they are in a Pending Restart state or not, and waits for the restart to complete before moving on to the next step in the plan.
Fixlet 160 Restart Endpoint on Pending Restart and Wait for Restart to Complete
The system restarts only the endpoints that in a Pending Restart state and waits for the restart to complete before moving on to the next step in the plan.
Fixlet 94 Restart Endpoint
The system continues to the next step when this step enters a Pending restart state as the endpoints are being restarted. It attempts to execute the next step while the endpoints might still be restarting. Do not use this Fixlet to manage the Pending restart state and automate the restart of endpoints.
No Fixlet
The next step in the plan will be executed, while the pending restart endpoints from the previous step will remain in a Pending restart state until they are restarted.

Successful Pending Restart steps remain in an Open state until the plan completes. This enables you to get a final status on the actual result of the step action after the restart completes.

Important: To safely restart the endpoints before moving on to the next step in the plan, the Fixlet that you must include in the plan to restart the endpoints is 126 Restart Endpoint and Wait for Restart to Complete or 160 Restart Endpoint on Pending Restart and Wait for Restart to Complete.

Pending Restart step actions and step failure behavior

When target endpoints report a Pending Restart status for a step action, the system does not automatically stop those Pending Restart step actions. If the Pending Restart step action was stopped, it would prevent the step action from being updated with the actual result of the action after the restart completed. Instead, the Pending Restart step action remains in an Open state, allowing any Restart Endpoint and Wait for Restart to Complete step added to update its status after the restart completes. This enables you to get the actual outcome of the step action once it becomes known.

This becomes more complex if the step that requires the restart fails. Steps in a Pending Restart state can fail if the step times out or if one or more endpoints report a failure status. If a step in a Pending Restart state fails, the Step failure behavior becomes more complex because the Pending Restart step action remains open. Here are two examples that illustrate how the Pending Restart state works with the step failure behavior settings.

Scenario 1: Failed Pending Restart Step and failure behavior set to Stop plan

In this scenario, step failure behavior is set to Stop Plan. A step fails but some endpoints report back a Pending Restart status. The step that fails has a failure step set. The failure step is Restart Endpoints and Wait step. The Pending Restart is then processed as follows:

  • The system leaves the failed step in an Open state and runs the failure step.
  • The targets that are in a Pending Restart state eventually report back with the actual result of the step action.
  • The system then stops all actions - for the failed step, the failure step, and the plan.

Scenario 2: Failed Pending Restart Step and failure behavior set to Continue Plan

In this scenario, step failure behavior is set to Continue Plan. A step fails but some endpoints report back a Pending Restart status. The step that fails does not have a failure step set. The Pending Restart is processed as follows:

  • The system leaves the failed step in an Open state and executes the subsequent step. The next step in the plan is a Restart Endpoints and Wait step.
  • Next, the Pending Restart targets of the failed step report back the actual status of the step action.
  • The system then stops the Restart Endpoints and Wait step and processes the remaining steps in the plan.
  • Last, when all steps have been processed, the system stops all remaining open step actions, including the action for the failed step, and then stops the plan action.