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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.
Best practices for configuring VM managers
Apply the best practices when configuring VM managers to ensure that your infrastructure works efficiently.
Optimal configuration strategies
Follow the optimal configuration strategies to collect all data from your VM managers.

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.
  - 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.
    - Optimal configuration strategies
      Follow the optimal configuration strategies to collect all data from your VM managers.
    - Configuring VM manager for subcapacity reporting
      If you use BigFix Inventory for subcapacity reporting purposes, perform additional configuration tasks to balance the workload of your VM Manager Tool.
- 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.

Optimal configuration strategies

Follow the optimal configuration strategies to collect all data from your VM managers.

Pooling interval

Pooling interval is a period during which VM Manager Tool is allowed to connect to all configured VM managers, and collect and upload the data from these VM managers. If pooling interval is exceeded, the VM Manager Tool times out and the next data collection cycle is delayed. If you want to count and report subcapacity, it is necessary to capture mobility of virtual machines. Therefore, data from VM managers must be collected every 30 minutes or more frequently. You can change the frequency of data collection only if you use BigFix Inventory for purposes other than subcapacity reporting. To specify the pooling interval, set the value of the vmm_pooling_time_interval parameter on the Advanced Server Settings panel or in the configuration file for VM Manager. For more information, see: Advanced Server Settings and VM Manager Tool Settings.

Number of virtual machines

The number of virtual machines that reside on VM managers directly relates to the amount of data that needs to be gathered. If you configure multiple connections from one VM Manager Tool to VM managers that host vast number of virtual machines, problems might occur. If it takes too long to collect data from all configured connections, VM Manager Tool times out as it exceeds the pooling interval time. _BESClient_ArchiveManager_MaxArchiveSize parameter limits the total size of files that are uploaded to the BigFix Inventory server. The limit might be exceeded by data that is collected from all configured connections and as a result, the data is not uploaded. For more information about the _BESClient_ArchiveManager_MaxArchiveSize parameter, see: Configuring VM manager for subcapacity reporting

VM managers and network performance

Performance of VM Manager Tool depends on the network typology of your environment as well as the hardware specifications and the load of hypervisors. If network connection is slow or the hypervisors take long time to respond and provide the requested data, performance of VM Manager Tool can be significantly impacted.