Home
Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
Setting up scans to discover software and hardware inventory
The scanner is an independent, well-defined component that is used by BigFix Inventory. It is installed and managed through the BigFix client, and it enables the software and capacity scans. Software and capacity scans collect data that is later on displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports. For environments with up to a few thousand computers, you can enable the default scan configuration. In this case, the analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically on the computers that are subscribed to the BigFix Inventory site. For larger environments, it is advisable to divide the computers into groups and manually configure a separate scan schedule for each group to avoid performance issues.
Manual scan configuration
Manual scan configuration is advised for environments with more than a few thousand computers. It requires that analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled manually after the installation. These actions are necessary to collect data from the computers in your infrastructure and display in on the BigFix Inventory reports. Flexibility of the manual scan configuration allows for avoiding performance issues that might occur when you scan too many computers at the same time.
Distribution of scans for improved performance
Performance of importing data from the BigFix server to BigFix Inventory depends on the number of scan files, usage analyses, and package analyses that are processed during a single import. By properly scheduling scans and distributing them over the computers in your infrastructure, you can reduce the length of the data import.

Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
- Creating users and groups
  Each user who has access to BigFix Inventory must be assigned a role and a computer group. The role defines which reports and panels the user can view. The computer group narrows down the scope of these reports and panels to computers that meet certain criteria.
- Setting up scans to discover software and hardware inventory
  The scanner is an independent, well-defined component that is used by BigFix Inventory. It is installed and managed through the BigFix client, and it enables the software and capacity scans. Software and capacity scans collect data that is later on displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports. For environments with up to a few thousand computers, you can enable the default scan configuration. In this case, the analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically on the computers that are subscribed to the BigFix Inventory site. For larger environments, it is advisable to divide the computers into groups and manually configure a separate scan schedule for each group to avoid performance issues.
  - Frequency of scans and uploads of data
    By default, software and capacity scans are scheduled with a frequency that meets auditing requirements. If you want to change the default frequency, ensure that the new setup fulfills the minimal requirements and all considerations.
  - Default scan configuration
    Default scan configuration is advised for environments with up to a few thousand computers. It ensures that the required analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically. These actions are necessary to collect data from the computers in your infrastructure and to display it on the BigFix Inventory reports. You can enable the default scan configuration during the configuration of BigFix Inventory connections to the databases or when adding another data source.
  - Manual scan configuration
    Manual scan configuration is advised for environments with more than a few thousand computers. It requires that analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled manually after the installation. These actions are necessary to collect data from the computers in your infrastructure and display in on the BigFix Inventory reports. Flexibility of the manual scan configuration allows for avoiding performance issues that might occur when you scan too many computers at the same time.
    - Distribution of scans for improved performance
      Performance of importing data from the BigFix server to BigFix Inventory depends on the number of scan files, usage analyses, and package analyses that are processed during a single import. By properly scheduling scans and distributing them over the computers in your infrastructure, you can reduce the length of the data import.
    - Step 1: Activating the analyses
      An analysis is a collection of property expressions that is used to view and summarize properties of computers in your infrastructure. Some of the analyses are required to discover installed software and must be activated all the time. Other analyses are used only in specific scenarios or for troubleshooting purposes and can be activated according to your needs.
    - Step 2: Installing the scanner
      The scanner collects hardware information as well as information about files and packages that exist on the computers in your infrastructure. Install the scanner on every computer on which you want to detect software. If you enabled the default scan configuration, the scanner is installed automatically and this configuration is not required.
    - Step 3: Initiating software scans
      During the software scans, the scanner collects information about files with particular extensions, package data, and software identification tags to evaluate whether particular software is installed on the computers in your infrastructure. It also gathers information about the running processes to measure software usage. By default, software scans are scheduled to run regularly but you can specify the exact days and times of the scans, or modify their start and end dates.
    - Step 4: Uploading software scan results
      When the software scan finishes, its results must be uploaded from the computers in your infrastructure to the BigFix server. To ensure that software inventory data is up-to-date, software scans and uploads of their results should run on a similar schedule.
    - Step 5: Collecting hardware information and capacity data
      The hardware information and capacity data concern information about your processors, and the processor capacity that is assigned to each computer. You can review the information on the Hardware Inventory report. The hardware and capacity data is essential to calculate processor-based metrics, for example PVU.
  - Advanced scan configuration
    After you successfully schedule software and capacity scans and the scan data is displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports, you can further customize the scans. For example, you can exclude directories from software scans or scan remote shared file systems.
  - Discovering software and hardware on IBM i
    Available from 9.2.5. You can discover software and hardware inventory on IBM i systems by using disconnected scans that do not require direct connection between the scanned computers and the BigFix server. Scripts that are provided in the disconnected scanner package initiate software and capacity scans, and prepare scan results that you later on upload to BigFix Inventory.
- Performing optional configuration
  You can perform optional configuration tasks to further customize the application.
- Classifying the BigFix client used by multiple BigFix products
  BigFix client is a component that is common for all products from the BigFix family. If you have a number of BigFix products installed, the client must be classified as used by these products. Because the client is usually installed on all computers in the enterprise, its manual classification can be time-consuming. To reduce the amount of time and resources that are needed to perform this task, you can generate license tags. The tags mark the client as used by the BigFix products that are installed in your infrastructure. The information is later on reflected in BigFix Inventory without the need of manual classification.

Distribution of scans for improved performance

Performance of importing data from the BigFix server to BigFix Inventory depends on the number of scan files, usage analyses, and package analyses that are processed during a single import. By properly scheduling scans and distributing them over the computers in your infrastructure, you can reduce the length of the data import.

Use the following guidelines to improve the performance of the data import:

Divide computers into groups

After you install BigFix Inventory, do not run the scans on all computers in your infrastructure. Divide the computers into groups in the BigFix console and start by gathering the default properties from a single computer group. For more information about creating computer groups in the BigFix console, see: Computer groups.
Consider creating computer groups that are based on stability. In a stable environment, scans can be run less frequently than once a week.

Schedule scans to run at different time

Schedule scans to run on different days for different computer groups.
Avoid a situation in which multiple groups are scanned at the same day or the following day. It might cause that scans and data imports interfere.
Reduce the frequency of scans. In most cases, it is sufficient to scan the infrastructure once a week, which is the default frequency. In large environments, you can disable the option to automatically run scans and initiate them only when necessary. The minimum scan frequency is once per month.

Limit the amount of gathered data

In the initial deployment phase, or if you do not need the information, disable the collection of software usage. For more information, see: Disabling the collection of software usage.
Try to limit the number of computer properties that are gathered during scans.

For more information about distributing scans and other actions that you can undertake to improve the application performance, see: Tuning performance.