Verifying restore results

To ensure that your BigFix Server has been restored, perform the following steps:

  1. Verify that all services are started. On Windows platforms, you can use the BigFix Diagnostics tool.
  2. Log in to the BigFix console and verify that the login works and that the database information was restored. In case of a login failure, see Error "Bad sequence parameter" when opening the BigFix Console.
  3. Use SQL Server Management Studio to connect to the BFEnterprise database and examine the DBINFO and REPLICATION_SERVERS tables. Compare the current values to the values noted running the Server Backup procedure.
  4. Verify that the new BigFix Server is able to connect to the database. Check all the Server logs for error messages on connecting to the database.

    Depending on your database authentication method (Windows versus SQL), it may be necessary to modify the domain/service accounts leveraged by the BigFix Server services (Root Server, GatherDB, FillDB, and Web Reports) to match the account previously leveraged with the old BigFix Server.

  5. Reconfigure any appropriate BigFix Server settings.
  6. If leveraging a DNS name/alias within the masthead, perform a DNS switch for the DNS name so that the alias now points to the new BigFix Server. Wait for the DNS switch to propagate (this may take some time depending on your DNS services/infrastructure).
  7. Ensure that the BigFix clients and BigFix relays connect to the server when it is available and report data to it. Full recovery with all agents reporting might take from a few minutes to many hours (depending on the size of the deployment and how long the server was unavailable). At least some agents should be reporting updated information within an hour.
  8. After verifying that some agents are reporting to the server, send a blank action: Tools > Take Custom Action to all computers. The blank action does not make any changes to the agent computers, but the agents report that they received the blank action.
  9. After restoring the data from the last backup, the BigFix server might restart at an earlier state with a disalignment between its mailbox and that of each relay. In this case, the BigFix server needs to resynchronize with the relays that have continued to process requests, otherwise the relays might ignore the requests of the server. To realign the mailboxes, see How to realign mailboxes after restoring a BigFix database backup.
  10. Log in to the web reports and ensure that the data was restored.
    Note: If a remote datasource is defined in the Web Reports configuration, Web Reports connects to the datasource only after you re-enter the datasource credentials in the Web Reports Administration > Datasource Settings > Edit page.