Before upgrading

Things to do before upgrading.

If you are upgrading from BigFix Version 10:
  • Carefully review the minimum OS requirements and Database requirements for the BigFix Server.
  • Ensure that the current version you are upgrading from is at Version 10.0.7 or later.
  • Enable the "Enhanced Security", as described in V11 Overview.
  • BigFix clients and relays versions earlier than Version 9.5 are not supported.

Perform these steps before upgrading the BigFix components:

  1. Ensure that the BigFix WebUI service is stopped before starting to upgrade the BigFix components, and do not start it again until the overall upgrade procedure is complete. Perform this step regardless of whether the WebUI is installed on the same system as the BigFix Server or on a different system.
  2. Ensure that all remote BigFix Web Reports servers are stopped and do not start them again until the overall upgrade procedure is complete.
  3. If you are using the Microsoft SQL Server Always On availability group feature, you must temporarily disable it.
  4. Close all BigFix consoles.
  5. Back up your BigFix server and database as described in Server Backup.
  6. Back up your license.pvk, license.crt, and masthead.afxm to a separate location on the BigFix server or to a USB key.
  7. Ensure that you have enough free space for the BigFix database. The free space projection involves a number of factors: the row counts of specific tables, the density of the data pages storing the tables and indexes, and specific database options for log management and table compression.
  8. Upgrade your SQL database engine, if needed.

In a Distributed Server Architecture (DSA) environment, increase the replication interval to prevent the replication from failing repeatedly during the upgrade. For additional information, see Changing the replication interval on Windows systems and Changing the replication interval on Linux systems.

If all needed requirements for automatic upgrade are satisfied, you can perform an automatic upgrade via Fixlet. Otherwise, you must perform a manual upgrade.