Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
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 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.
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.
BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
Download BigFix from the HCL License & Delivery Portal (Flexnet).
When performing a fresh installation of BigFix Server Version 9.5 Patch 7 or later, you can either perform an evaluation installation or a production installation.
Before you perform the steps below, you must have purchased a license and obtained a BigFix license authorization file (*.BESLicenseAuthorization) using your License Key Center account or, in the case of a Proof-of-Concept evaluation, that was provided to you by your HCL Technical Sales Representative.
*.BESLicenseAuthorization
You have now created a private key, requested and received a certificate, used the certificate to create a masthead, and then generated the various installation components, including the BigFix Installation Guide.
You can have one or more BigFix components installed on a local system and you can decide to remove one or all of them at the same time.
Multiple servers can provide a higher level of service for your BigFix installation.
To uninstall a replication server, call the database-stored procedure delete_replication_server, which removes the specified ID from the replication set.
After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
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.
If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
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.
This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.