Main background application tasks
The main goal of BigFix Inventory is to generate PVU, and RVU audit reports based on the collected data. All calculations are done in accordance with PVU, and RVU license pricing rules that are described in the official subcapacity licensing documents.
Aggregation
Aggregation is the main calculation task in BigFix Inventory. The aggregation process is a scheduled background task that is run on a daily basis at a particular hour. By default it is performed when the server time is midnight. The task calculates the PVU, and RVU values based on the data that is collected from the agents during software and capacity scans.
Reaggregation
- Rebundling a software instance from one product to another
- Confirming the default bundle
- Including software instance in PVU, or RVU calculations
- Excluding software instance from PVU, or RVU calculations
- Sharing an instance
Aggregation versus reaggregation
The aggregation process was designed to calculate the data from many agents for all products over a short time. In contrast, reaggregation process was designed to perform quick recalculation of PVU, and RVU values for a selected subset of products that were already aggregated. Aggregation of all products from all agents is much quicker (even hundreds of times) than reaggregation of the same amount of data. However, when you must recalculate the PVU and RVU values of only one product, reaggregation should be quicker than aggregation, which cannot recalculate the reporting value of only one product, but must reaggregate it for all discovered products simultaneously.
Inventory builder
Inventory builder is another background task that is executed periodically. During this time, the software inventory is built based on the data from the agent software scans. In other words, this task transforms a list of discovered software components to a list of the discovered software products. In most cases, the initial software bundling of detected components performed by the inventory builder has a very low level of confidence.
Automated bundling
Similarly to aggregation, automated bundling is a periodic background task. It is strictly related to the inventory builder task - when the execution of inventory builder ends, automated bundling starts.
- Import of a new set of part numbers
- Import of a new software catalog
- After manual rebundling or manual confirmation of one product instance, other unconfirmed product instances can be better bundled by using partition or infrastructure collocation rules
- Detection of a new simple software component (a component that can be assigned to only one product) by agents might also change the calculations for other unconfirmed instances due to partition or infrastructure collocation automated bundling rules.
Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
In general, Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) is the process in database usage that combines three database functions that aim at transferring data from one database and placing it into another. The first stage, Extract, involves reading and extracting data from various source systems. The second one, Transform, converts the data from its original form into the form that meets the requirements of the target database. The last stage, Load, saves the new data into the target database, thus finishing the process of transferring the data.
In BigFix Inventory, the Extract stage involves extracting data from the BigFix server. Such data includes information about the infrastructure, installed agents and detected software. ETL also checks if the new software catalog is available, gathers information about the software scan and files that are present on the endpoints, and collects data from the VM managers.
The extracted data is then transformed to a single format that can be loaded to the BigFix Inventory database. This stage also involves matching scan data with the software catalog, calculating processor value units (PVU), processing the capacity scan, and converting information that is contained in the XML files.
After the data is extracted and transformed, it is loaded to the database and can be used by BigFix Inventory.