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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.
Managing VM managers
VM managers are pieces of software that create, manage, and monitor virtual machines. You configure connections to VM managers so that BigFix Inventory can gather data that is required to calculate utilization of license metrics in virtual environments.
Advanced VM management (distributed)
Use advanced VM management if the BigFix server cannot connect to some of the VM managers because they are in separated networks. This approach requires that you install an additional VM Manager Tool, and configure VM managers through the command line.
Deployment scenarios
Before you proceed to advanced VM management, review the available scenarios for which you can use the additional instance of VM Manager Tool. The main purpose is to transfer the capacity data from VM managers that are in separated networks, but you can also balance the network traffic, or filter your virtual machines based on their UUIDs.

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.
- Computer statuses
  Computer statuses provide information about the condition of the computers that are monitored by BigFix Inventory. To properly discover the installed software and measure its license metric utilization, ensure that computers in your environment work correctly.
- Managing VM managers
  VM managers are pieces of software that create, manage, and monitor virtual machines. You configure connections to VM managers so that BigFix Inventory can gather data that is required to calculate utilization of license metrics in virtual environments.
  - Default PVU counting on x86 processors
    To properly calculate PVU subcapacity, BigFix Inventory requires information about the number of processor cores that are available to virtual machines and on the physical computers that host these machines. If the information is not available, license metric utilization cannot be properly calculated and reported results might be over-counted for x86 processors.
  - Supported virtualization types
    BigFix Inventory requires that connections to VM managers are defined for the following virtualization types: Kernel-based Virtual Machine, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, and Xen.
  - Flow of capacity data from VM managers
    To understand how capacity data is gathered in virtual environments, see what data flows between virtual machines, VM Manager Tool, and the BigFix Inventory server, and how frequently it is transferred.
  - Basic VM management (central)
    Use basic VM management if the BigFix server can connect to VM managers in your infrastructure. It is the default method of configuring connections to VM managers through the BigFix Inventory user interface.
  - Advanced VM management (distributed)
    Use advanced VM management if the BigFix server cannot connect to some of the VM managers because they are in separated networks. This approach requires that you install an additional VM Manager Tool, and configure VM managers through the command line.
    - Deployment scenarios
      Before you proceed to advanced VM management, review the available scenarios for which you can use the additional instance of VM Manager Tool. The main purpose is to transfer the capacity data from VM managers that are in separated networks, but you can also balance the network traffic, or filter your virtual machines based on their UUIDs.
    - Installing additional VM Manager Tool
      To connect to VM managers that are in separated networks, you must first install additional VM Manager Tool. You can install it on any computer that can connect to the separated networks.
    - Uploading collected data
      After you install additional VM Manager Tool, schedule the regular uploads of collected data. This action is required so that the capacity data that is collected by VM Manager Tool is uploaded to the BigFix server.
    - Adding VM managers
      In advanced VM management, you add VM managers by creating configuration files, where you specify web address, type, and credentials that are required to access a VM manager. Each VM manager uses a separate configuration file.
    - Running VM Manager Tool
      After creating configuration files for your VM managers, you must run the VM Manager Tool to load the configuration, test connections, and check the status of VM managers.
    - Additional configuration
      Additional configuration tasks are intended to give you more control over VM Manager Tool. You can use them to customize the VM Manager Tool, or to enable filtering of virtual machines based on their UUIDs. All of these tasks are optional.
  - Collecting capacity data from virtualization hosts for Xen and KVM
    For Citrix, Xen and KVM, connection to the VM manager does not have to be defined in BigFix Inventory to collect capacity data. The data can be collected directly from virtualization hosts by using the Run Capacity Scan on Virtualization Hosts task.
  - Maintenance tasks
    You can perform additional maintenance and troubleshooting tasks on VM Manager Tool. These tasks are not limited to a specific approach to VM management, but can be applied to any instance of VM Manager Tool.
  - Best practices for configuring VM managers
    Apply the best practices when configuring VM managers to ensure that your infrastructure works efficiently.
- Administering the server
  Perform administering tasks on your server to configure advanced settings, or restart its services.
- Administering the database
  Perform administering tasks on your database to keep it in good condition, protect your data, or configure additional settings.
- Removing inactive computers
  When you decommission a computer in your infrastructure, it continues to report to BigFix Inventory. The data is still collected from this computer, and displayed on the metric reports. To ensure that all infrastructure changes are reflected in BigFix Inventory, you should remove each decommissioned computer from BigFix. If you cannot remove this computer from BigFix for a valid reason, you can use an alternative solution, and decommission the computer in BigFix Inventory.
- Managing data sources
  Computers in an organization can be divided into organizational units, and can be monitored by multiple BigFix infrastructures. Each infrastructure is referred to as a data source. Data from multiple data sources can be imported to one instance of BigFix Inventory.

Deployment scenarios

Before you proceed to advanced VM management, review the available scenarios for which you can use the additional instance of VM Manager Tool. The main purpose is to transfer the capacity data from VM managers that are in separated networks, but you can also balance the network traffic, or filter your virtual machines based on their UUIDs.

Scenario 1: A VM manager is in a separated network and cannot connect to BigFix

Without a direct connection to BigFix, data about capacity of VM Managers cannot be collected, which conflicts with license compliance. If you have a separated network in your environment, you can use VM Manager Tool that serves as a connector between VM Managers and the server. The tool can be installed on any computer that can connect to VM Managers. It gathers data about their capacity and then uploads it to the server.

The following image shows two separated networks, each represented by a different VM Manager Tool.

Representation of the typical implementation of the VM manager data collector.

Scenario 2: You want to balance the network traffic coming from multiple VM Managers

You can balance the network traffic by distributing it between multiple VM Manager Tools. Successful load balancing optimizes resource use, maximizes throughput, minimizes response time, and avoids overload.

The following image shows two VM Manager Tools connected to the BigFix server. Each of them is responsible for gathering capacity data from different VM Managers.

Representation of the implementation of multiple VM manager data collectors in a large environment.

Scenario 3: UUID-based virtual machine filtering

The purpose of filtering based on universally unique identifier (UUID) is to select only those virtual machines whose capacity and topology data is to be included in a final report. The VM manager has the function of matching UUIDs of selected guests. To stay compliant, all the necessary virtual machines units must be included in the report. When you enable UUID-based filtering all of the non-selected guests, empty hosts and clusters are removed.