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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Upgrading on Linux systems
BigFix client backward compatibility
To correctly display reports of clients deployed with different code pages and languages you must have ALL the components (server, relays, clients) at version 9.5.

Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
- Introduction
  BigFix aims to solve the increasingly complex problem of keeping your critical systems updated, compatible, and free of security issues. It uses patented Fixlet technology to identify vulnerable computers in your enterprise. With just a few mouse-clicks you can remediate them across your entire network from a central console.
- BigFix Platform Unicode Support Overview
  BigFix Platform V9.5 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies. Your organization might look similar to one of the examples below, depending on the size of your network, the various bandwidth restrictions between clusters and the number of relays and servers. The main constraint is not CPU power, but bandwidth.
- Requirements and assumptions
  BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
- Types of installation
  Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
- Managing licenses
  You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
- Before installing
  Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Installing on Windows systems
  Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing on Linux systems
  After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing the clients
  Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
- BigFix Administration Tool
  The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
- Post-installation configuration steps
  After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Managing relays
  Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
- Introduction to Tiny Core Linux - BigFix Virtual Relay
  Follow the step-by-step sequence of operations needed to build the virtual machine, from the downloading of the ISO image to the complete setup and configuration of the BigFix Virtual Relay.
- Setting up a proxy connection
  If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
- Running backup and restore
  You can schedule periodic backups (typically nightly) of the BigFix server and database files, to reduce the risk of losing productivity or data when a problem occurs by restoring the latest backup.
- Upgrading on Windows systems
- Upgrading on Linux systems
  - BigFix client backward compatibility
    To correctly display reports of clients deployed with different code pages and languages you must have ALL the components (server, relays, clients) at version 9.5.
  - Upgrade paths to V9.5
    The following tables show the upgrade paths to BigFix V9.5:
  - Automatic databases backup upon upgrade
    You can configure your BigFix Server to automatically run the backup of the BFENT and BESREPOR databases before and after running the upgrade process.
  - Before upgrading
    Perform these steps before upgrading the BigFix components:
  - Upgrade prerequisite checks
    The following prerequisite checks are automatically run by the upgrade procedure on the BigFix Server.
  - Automatic upgrade
    You can proceed with an automatic upgrade using the "BigFix - Updated Platform Server Components version x.x.x Now Available!" Fixlet.
  - Manual upgrade
    Use the manual upgrade instead of the Fixlet upgrade when you upgrade a DSA multiple server environment.
  - Rollback
- Known limitations and workarounds
  This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
- Logging
  This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.
- Uninstalling the BigFix client

BigFix client backward compatibility

To correctly display reports of clients deployed with different code pages and languages you must have ALL the components (server, relays, clients) at version 9.5.

Before upgrading the BigFix server to V9.5, ensure that it is at V9.2.3 or later. Complete the upgrade in the following order:

The server
The relays. If relays are configured in a hierarchy, upgrade the top-level relays before the lower-level relays.
The clients

If you have a BigFix client with an earlier version than V9.5, consider the following:

You might encounter issues when upgrading a client that has settings whose name or value contain non-ASCII characters. If custom settings with these values exist, check that they have not been altered after upgrading to V9.5.
BigFix clients V9.2.6 or later are supported without any additional configuration.
Immediately after receiving the updated masthead, restart the BESClient process on BigFix clients V9.2.0 through V9.2.5 to activate the new masthead parameters. Use the tasks available under BES Support to restart the clients. To find these tasks, filter for "Troubleshooting: Restart BES client" from the Fixlets and Tasks list on the BigFix Console.
BigFix clients V9.1 must have the same code page settings as the BigFix server in the _BESClient_DeploymentEncoding_IANAName setting.
BigFix clients and relays versions earlier than 9.1 are not supported.
After upgrading BigFix to V9.5, the filldb process on clients might fail if the filldb buffer directory contains reports that use an unexpected report encoding value, for example ReportEncoding: hp-roman8. If so, clean up the filldb buffer directory containing the reports and then restart filldb.