Running baselines from a site

You can automatically execute all of the Baselines that are contained in a particular site against a set of endpoints. You do this by running an Automation Plan that contains a Server Automation Task designed to execute all of the Baselines in a site. Any new Baselines that you create in or add to that site are executed automatically every time that you re-use the Automation Plan.

About this task

This feature enables you to easily run all of the Baselines that are contained in a particular site against a set of endpoints. To run the Baselines contained in a site, you add a specific Server Automation Task to an Automation Plan. This feature is particularly useful for patching scenarios, for example, automating patching of Microsoft Windows® clusters.

Key points

Note the following key points:
  • You can only run this Task as part of an Automation Plan. You cannot run the Task standalone.
  • You cannot run Fixlet content from the site that you are targeting, only Baselines.
  • If you schedule a plan and select the Enable prefetching option, the prefetch content is downloaded immediately, from the point at which you submit the scheduled plan. If the source content changes between the time the prefetch content is downloaded and the scheduled execution time, the updated source content is included at plan execution time but may not have been downloaded in advance. When the scheduled execution time arrives, the plan takes the content of the site at the point at which the plan is executed. For example, if you schedule a plan and prefetch downloads, the prefetch content for the Baselines in the site is downloaded immediately as soon as you submit the scheduled plan. This prefetch content stays the same and is not updated if the source content contained in the Baselines changes. However, the plan takes the content of the site as it exists at plan execution time, so if any Baselines have been added or removed from the site, these changes are included in the plan that is executed.
  • You cannot include the Task to run all Baselines from a site as a failure step.
  • Parameters are not supported in Baselines, therefore you cannot include any parameterized Fixlets in Baselines that you want to run from a site.
  • For performance reasons, it is recommended that the site from which you are executing Baselines does not contain a large number of Baselines. For information about performance, see the Deployment Health Check dashboard in the BigFix Management domain and review the information about Open Actions. More information about open actions and performance is available from Enhancing the performance of Server Automation. For more information about BigFix performance, see Performance Configurations.
  • The Baselines from a site are dynamically included in a plan and are executed in parallel.

Complete the following steps to run Baselines from a site.

Procedure

  1. Add the Baselines to the site that you plan to target when you run the Automation Plan. Make sure that you have access to the site.
  2. Create a new Automation Plan or modify a copy of an existing sample plan, adding Server Automation Task 137 Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site to the position in the plan where you want the Task to be processed. For example, if step 1 in your plan creates a new Windows virtual machine and you want to patch the operating system of the newly created virtual machine in step 2 by running all of the baselines contained in a site, add Task 137 Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site as the second step in the plan.
  3. Save the plan.
  4. Click Take Action to begin running the plan. For the step in the plan containing the Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site Task, target the set of endpoints against which you want to run all of the Baselines in the site.
  5. On the Parameters tab for the step containing the Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site Task, select the site that contains the Baselines that you want to execute from the drop-down list. The system provides a read-only view of the site URL and provides a read-only site preview.
  6. Add other steps to your plan, as required, making sure that all steps have targets assigned.
  7. To begin running the plan, click OK.

Example

In this scenario we have an Automation Plan that executes all of the Baselines contained in a site. The Automation Plan is a copy of a Microsoft® Windows cluster patching sample plan, 143 Sample Plan: Clustered Windows Server (2008 and newer versions) OS Patching. We replace the placeholder Fixlet in the sample plan with Task 137 Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site. When running the plan, we then specify the site that contains the Baselines that we want to execute, as follows:
  • Step 1 in the plan is Pause Node (Windows 2008-2012). This step pauses the first node or set of nodes in the cluster.
  • Step 2 Move Groups from Node (Windows 2008-2012). This step moves groups from the node.
  • Step 3 in the sample plan is a placeholder. The sample plan includes this placeholder step so that you can replace it with a Fixlet or Task of your choice. We will replace this step with Task 137 Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site. From the Take Automation Plan Action screen, target the first node or set of nodes in the cluster. When this step runs, all of the Baselines in the site that you specified will be executed against these targets.
  • Step 4 will restart any endpoints that are in a Pending Restart state after the Baselines in the site that you specify in the previous step have been executed.
  • Step 5 is Resume Node (Windows 2008-2012). This step resumes the first node or set of nodes to the original state.
  • The next five steps in the plan are repeats of steps 1 to 5. These steps repeat the same actions on the second node or set of nodes in the cluster.
  • For step 8, replace the placeholder Fixlet with Task 137 Dynamically Select Baselines from a Site, targeting the second node or set of nodes in the cluster.