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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.
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.
Detailed hardware scan
Available from 9.2.12. Detailed hardware scan collects hardware information related to memory, operating systems, storage, processors, partitions, network adapters, SMBIOS data, IP addresses and logical partition capacity data. The solution is supported on Windows, Linux x86 ad AIX. It can be run also on other operating systems but the results might not be accurate.
Collecting detailed hardware scan information
Available from 9.2.12. You can collect the detailed hardware information by running the Collect Detailed Hardware Information task in the BigFix console. To retrieve the data use the relevant REST API.

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.
  - 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.
    - Detailed hardware scan
      Available from 9.2.12. Detailed hardware scan collects hardware information related to memory, operating systems, storage, processors, partitions, network adapters, SMBIOS data, IP addresses and logical partition capacity data. The solution is supported on Windows, Linux x86 ad AIX. It can be run also on other operating systems but the results might not be accurate.
      - Collecting detailed hardware scan information
        Available from 9.2.12. You can collect the detailed hardware information by running the Collect Detailed Hardware Information task in the BigFix console. To retrieve the data use the relevant REST API.
    - Discovering software on shared disks
      To discover software that is installed on shared disks, identify disks that exist in your infrastructure. Then, choose the method of scanning these disks that best suits your environment.
    - Discovering software in Docker containers
      Available from 9.2.5. Docker is a platform that allows for automating the deployment of applications inside software containers. BigFix Inventory discovers software that is installed inside Docker containers. It also measures license metric utilization of the discovered BigFix products.
    - Excluding directories from being scanned
      Excluding some directories from scanning is useful if the directories are large and contain no information that is important to the software inventory. By excluding them, you can speed up the scanning process. Some directories are excluded from software scans by default. They must remain excluded to ensure accuracy of data. You can add or remove other directories from the list by using tasks in the BigFix console. You can also manually add them to the scanner files on particular endpoints.
    - Discovering software and hardware with disconnected scanner on Windows and UNIX
      Available from 9.2.7. You can discover software and hardware inventory 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.
    - Scheduling imports of data
      BigFix clients report data to the BigFix server that stores the data in its file system or database. BigFix Inventory server connects to the BigFix server and its database, downloads the stored data, and processes it. This process is called an import or Extract, Transform, Load (ETL). By default, the import runs once a day at midnight. You can schedule it for a period that is most suitable for your environment considering its size and specification.
    - Creating capacity configuration for Linux on z Systems
      To properly calculate subcapacity values for products that are installed on Linux on z Systems, create capacity configuration for such computers. First, run a fixlet that creates a file with manually entered capacity values and places it on the target computer. Then, run regular software and capacity scans to discover the installed software and calculate its license metric utilization.
    - Setting the DSD mode on Solaris
      If a computer runs the Solaris operating system and is in the DSD domain, set the DSD mode to ensure that metric utilization is correctly calculated for software that is installed on this computer. If you do not set the DSD mode, Solaris machines in DSD might not be properly identified and metric utilization might be underestimated.
    - Optimizing scanner cache configuration
      The scanner cache folder is used to store information about scanned files and directories in your file system. By knowing the hierarchy of files, the scanner can locate them quicker, which results in shorter scans. The amount of disk space that is needed for the cache depends on the number of files that are being scanned. If the current location of the cache folder cannot ensure sufficient disk space, you can change the location of the cache folder or optimize the cache.
    - Deprecated: Setting up additional analysis properties
      Analysis properties are used to recognize software and gather information about its usage. Analysis properties are set by default in BigFix Inventory. You can also set up your own properties that you want to use to gather information from the endpoints.
    - Disabling the collection of software usage
      Information about software usage is collected if you enabled the default scan configuration or manually activated the Application Usage Statistics analysis and ran the relevant scan. If you are in the initial deployment phase, or if you do not need information about software usage, you can disable the collection of this information to improve BigFix Inventory performance and shorten the import time.
    - Optimizing the volume of scanned file data
      The Scanned File Data report provides information about files with particular extensions that were discovered on the computers in your infrastructure, and the files that are associated with the processes detected on these computers regardless of the extension. The information is typically used for creating custom discovery and use signatures. To optimize the volume of the monitored data, narrow down the list of file extensions that are collected to only those extensions that are typically used for creating signatures. It reduces the workload on the BigFix Inventory server and improves the application performance.
  - 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.

Collecting detailed hardware scan information

Available from 9.2.12. You can collect the detailed hardware information by running the Collect Detailed Hardware Information task in the BigFix console. To retrieve the data use the relevant REST API.

About this task

Limitations

Detailed hardware scan cannot be collected if you use the disconnected scan.
The output of the detailed hardware scan cannot exceed 100 KB. This limit should be enough for most endpoints. However, if it is exceeded, the results will not be imported to BigFix Inventory server. Information about exceeding the limit of 100 KB is returned by the Detailed Hardware Information analysis.

Considerations

If a piece of information is not applicable to your system, or cannot be retrieved, the detailed hardware scan returns no value, or the value equals "-1".
In case of virtual systems, such as, VMware, Hyper-V or KVM guests, the scanner might not be able to retrieve the accurate value of some physical machine attributes. The physical system information is emulated by the hypervisor and the scanner cannot access the host system properties directly. The level of similarity between the virtual devices and the actual hardware depends on the virtualization technology used.

Procedure

Log in to the BigFix console.
In the navigation tree, click Sites > External Sites > BigFix Inventory v9 > Fixlets and Tasks.
Select Collect Detailed Hardware Information, and then in the lower pane, click Take Action.
Select computers from which you want to collect the detailed hardware information.
Optional: By default, the scan repeats every week. However, you can customize the frequency of the scan according to your needs. Select Execution tab and modify the Reapply this action section.
Click OK.
To populate the scan results to BigFix, activate the Detailed Hardware Information analysis.
Wait for the scheduled import, or run it manually.
To retrieve the detailed hardware information, use the relevant REST API call. For more information, see: REST API for retrieving detailed hardware information (v2).

Results

The API call returns the detailed hardware information about the computers in your environment.

You can check the status and the date of the last scan in Detailed Hardware Information analysis.