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Managing the infrastructure
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
Administering the database
Perform administering tasks on your database to keep it in good condition, protect your data, or configure additional settings.
Backing up and restoring the database
Perform regular backups of the data that is stored in the database, and restore it when needed to prevent data loss.

Managing the infrastructure
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
- Computer statuses
  Computer statuses provide information about the condition of the computers that are monitored by BigFix Inventory. To properly discover the installed software and measure its license metric utilization, ensure that computers in your environment work correctly.
- Managing VM managers
  VM managers are pieces of software that create, manage, and monitor virtual machines. You configure connections to VM managers so that BigFix Inventory can gather data that is required to calculate utilization of license metrics in virtual environments.
- Administering the server
  Perform administering tasks on your server to configure advanced settings, or restart its services.
- Administering the database
  Perform administering tasks on your database to keep it in good condition, protect your data, or configure additional settings.
  - Backing up and restoring the database
    Perform regular backups of the data that is stored in the database, and restore it when needed to prevent data loss.
    - Backing up the DB2® database
      You should back up the database on a regular basis to protect your data. Each backup is the copy of the entire database that can be restored in the case of corruption or malfunction.
    - Restoring the DB2® database
      If your database has been corrupted or you want to revert some changes, you can restore it to its previous state from one of the backup files. Depending on the backup procedure that you chose, use either offline or online backup files. In the latter case, you must also restore the archive logs to make the database consistent.
    - Backing up the SQL Server database
      You can make a copy of your database by saving it to a backup file. If you want, you can then move the backup to another computer and restore it in a different BigFix Inventory instance.
    - Restoring the SQL Server database
      If you encounter any problems with your database or if you want to move it between different instances of BigFix Inventory, you can use a backup file to restore the database.
  - Creating a new database
    To create a new database without reinstalling BigFix Inventory, you must modify the configuration file that stores information about the database. After you do so, you will be able to complete the initial configuration again, and create a new database.
  - Reinstalling BigFix Inventory with an existing database
    You can reinstall BigFix Inventory and connect it to an existing database. This allows you to preserve all the data collected so far and avoid changing configuration settings.
  - Moving the BigFix Inventory database
    To move the BigFix Inventory database to a different computer, back up the database, move it to the target computer, and point to that computer in the server.xml and database.yml files.
  - Updating the database password
    You can update the database user password when needed, for example if the password is changed and users cannot log in to BigFix Inventory.
- Removing inactive computers
  When you decommission a computer in your infrastructure, it continues to report to BigFix Inventory. The data is still collected from this computer, and displayed on the metric reports. To ensure that all infrastructure changes are reflected in BigFix Inventory, you should remove each decommissioned computer from BigFix. If you cannot remove this computer from BigFix for a valid reason, you can use an alternative solution, and decommission the computer in BigFix Inventory.
- Managing data sources
  Computers in an organization can be divided into organizational units, and can be monitored by multiple BigFix infrastructures. Each infrastructure is referred to as a data source. Data from multiple data sources can be imported to one instance of BigFix Inventory.

Backing up and restoring the database

Perform regular backups of the data that is stored in the database, and restore it when needed to prevent data loss.

To maintain data consistency during data recovery, it is recommended to perform backup at least once per week. When you plan regular backups, you must consider the dynamics of your environment, for example, infrastructure changes and software installations. It is a good practice to back up the database before you update the software catalog, upgrade the server, or introduce significant changes to the middleware or the operating system. The number of backups that you keep depends on the storage space available. It is recommended to ensure that the backup that you store allows the restoration of your environment to the last functional state. Thus, if you introduce several consecutive changes in the application, the database, or the operating system, ensure that you perform backup after each of those change.

Consider the start time and duration of the import when you plan the backup schedule to avoid performance impact on the data import.