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Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
Setting up scans and import
Learn how to improve the scanning and importing activities to optimize the performance in your infrastructure.
Dividing the infrastructure into scan groups
To avoid running into performance issues, you should divide the computers in your infrastructure into scan groups and properly set the scan schedule. You should start by creating a benchmark scan group on which you can try different configurations to achieve optimal import time. After the import time is satisfactory for the benchmark group, you can divide the rest of your infrastructure into analogous scan groups.
Scan schedule
It is critical for BigFix Inventory performance that you accurately schedule scans in the scan groups in your environment. If the configuration is not well-balanced, you might experience long import times.

Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
- Infrastructure
  The main factor that affects the performance of the BigFix Inventory server is the performance of the underlying infrastructure on which the application server and the DB2 database are running. You must ensure that the recommended requirements are met.
- Setting up scans and import
  Learn how to improve the scanning and importing activities to optimize the performance in your infrastructure.
  - Good practices for running scans and imports
    Apply the good practices when running scans and imports to ensure that your infrastructure works efficiently.
  - Dividing the infrastructure into scan groups
    To avoid running into performance issues, you should divide the computers in your infrastructure into scan groups and properly set the scan schedule. You should start by creating a benchmark scan group on which you can try different configurations to achieve optimal import time. After the import time is satisfactory for the benchmark group, you can divide the rest of your infrastructure into analogous scan groups.
    - Scan schedule
      It is critical for BigFix Inventory performance that you accurately schedule scans in the scan groups in your environment. If the configuration is not well-balanced, you might experience long import times.
    - Recommendations for the service provider environments
      The service provider functionality is used to create separate subcapacity reports for different sets of computers. You can create such a report for each computer group. By default, the calculation of PVU and RVU MAPC consumption is disabled for new computer groups. After you enable it, a computer group becomes a subcapacity computer group, and can have its own subcapacity report. This, however, impacts performance due to increased number of subcapacity calculations.
- Additional tasks for improving performance
  Learn about additional tasks that you might want to perform to improve the performance in your infrastructure.
- Tuning performance in medium and large environments
  You can learn the possible causes of the most common performance issues in medium and large environments. Follow the tips and the known solutions to these issues to keep the system in good shape and avoid performance problems.
- REST API considerations
  You can use BigFix Inventory REST API to retrieve large amounts of data that is related to computer systems, software instances, and license usage in your environment. Such information can then be passed to other applications for further processing and analysis.

Scan schedule

It is critical for BigFix Inventory performance that you accurately schedule scans in the scan groups in your environment. If the configuration is not well-balanced, you might experience long import times.

For environments larger than 35 000 endpoints, divide your endpoints into separate scan groups. The system administrator can then set a different scanning schedule for every scan group in your environment.

Example

If you have 60 000 endpoints, you can create six scan groups (every group containing 10 000 endpoints). The first scan group has the scanning schedule set to Monday, the second to Tuesday, and so on. Using this configuration, every endpoint is scanned once a week. At the same time, the BigFix server receives data only from 1/6 of your environment daily and for every daily import the BigFix Inventory server needs to process data only from 10 000 endpoints (instead of 60 000 endpoints). This environment configuration shortens the BigFix Inventory import time.

The image below presents a scan schedule for an infrastructure that is divided into six scan groups. You might achieve such a schedule after you implement recommendations that are contained in this guide. The assumption is that both software scans and imports of scan data to BigFix Inventory are scheduled to take place at night, while uploads of scan data from the endpoints to the BigFix server occur during the day.

If you have a powerful server computer and longer import time is acceptable, you can create fewer scan groups with greater number of endpoints in the BigFix console. Remember to monitor the import log to analyze the amount of data that is processed and the time it takes to process it.

For information how to create scan groups, see the topic Computer groups that is available in the BigFix documentation.