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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Requirements and assumptions
BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
Network configuration requirements
The following network configuration is recommended for security and performance reasons:

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.
  - Server requirements
  - Console requirements
  - Client requirements
    To find the latest information about the client requirements, see Platform/Installation/c_spcr_platform.html.
  - Database requirements
    The database stores all the data retrieved from the clients. Before installing the BigFix server, ensure that the database requirements are met.
  - Security requirements
    The system authenticates all Fixlets and actions using secure public-key infrastructure (PKI) signatures. PKI uses public/private key pairs to ensure authenticity.
  - Network configuration requirements
    The following network configuration is recommended for security and performance reasons:
  - Assumptions
    The process of getting the BigFix up and running varies, depending on your network environment and your security policies.
- 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
- 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

Network configuration requirements

The following network configuration is recommended for security and performance reasons:

All internal network communication is on one specified port (52311 is the default port for all the components, including the console) to allow for simplicity and flexibility of deployment. TCP/IP and UDP on this port must be completely unblocked at all internal routers and internal firewalls (you can optionally disable UDP, but that might negatively affect performance).
The BigFix server should connect to the network at 100 mbps or higher.
Consoles should have high speed connections to the BigFix server (100 mbps or higher)
The BigFix client must be installed on the BigFix server machine.

These networking recommendations are typically easy to satisfy for most organizations maintaining a moderate security posture. For information about larger installations, see Deployment Scenarios.

The BigFix Server requirements and performance can also be affected by other factors in addition to the number of clients. These factors include:

The number of console operators: Multiple console operators can connect to the servers at the same time to manage subsets of the networked computers. Some deployments can have hundreds of operators. If you plan to have more than 30 operators, you might want to have a more powerful Server to support the additional load.
Relays: Use to lighten the load on the servers by accepting connections from clients and then forwarding the data to a server. In most deployments, very few clients report directly to the main Server.
Note: To improve performance, you can connect from 500 to 1000 clients to each relay and use a parent child relay configuration.
The number and type of Retrieved Properties and Analyses: Custom-Retrieved properties and analyses can provide extremely useful data, but if custom properties are poorly implemented or overused, they can also create undue load on the system by requiring too much bandwidth or too many client resources. For example, it would be unwise to create a custom-retrieved property that returned the names of every file on every computer, due to the load on the client computers and the network.

For more information about these issues, see https://bigfix-wiki.hcltechsw.com/wikis/home?lang=en-us#!/wiki/BigFix%20Wiki/page/Performance%20Configuration.