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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Installing on Windows systems
Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
DSA on Windows
Uninstalling a Windows replication server
To uninstall a replication server, call the database-stored procedure delete_replication_server, which removes the specified ID from the replication set.

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.
  - Step 1 - Downloading BigFix
    Download BigFix from the HCL License & Delivery Portal (Flexnet).
  - Performing an evaluation installation
    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.
  - Step 2 - Requesting a license and creating the masthead
    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.
  - Installing the components
    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.
  - Removing the Product Components on Windows systems
    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.
  - DSA on Windows
    - Installing Additional Windows Servers (DSA)
    - Authenticating Additional Servers
      Multiple servers can provide a higher level of service for your BigFix installation.
    - Uninstalling a Windows replication server
      To uninstall a replication server, call the database-stored procedure delete_replication_server, which removes the specified ID from the replication set.
- 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

Uninstalling a Windows replication server

To uninstall a replication server, call the database-stored procedure delete_replication_server, which removes the specified ID from the replication set.

Be careful not to delete the wrong server, or you might lock yourself out. The details of this procedure are beyond the scope of this guide, but basically you must log in to the database with SQL Server Management Studio. You can call the procedure with something like:

call dbo.delete_replication_server(n)

where n is the identifier of the server to delete.

The steps involved in completely deleting the server are beyond the scope of this guide, but the full procedure is available in How to remove a secondary DSA server from BigFix Administration Tool.