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Installing
Learn about the requirements and available installation scenarios to ensure that the deployment of BigFix Inventory goes smoothly in your environment.
Coexistence scenarios
This topic describes supported scenarios for the coexistence of BigFix Inventory and License Metric Tool.

Installing
Learn about the requirements and available installation scenarios to ensure that the deployment of BigFix Inventory goes smoothly in your environment.
- Planning the installation
  Before you start the installation, review information about hardware and software requirements and other considerations to ensure that the installation completes successfully.
- Detailed System requirements
  The tables in this section provide detailed information about the system requirements for BigFix Inventory 10.
- Software requirements
  Ensure that all prerequisite software is installed on the computers in your infrastructure.
- Hardware requirements
  Before deploying BigFix Inventory review hardware specifications required to serve your environment.
- Port requirements
  When planning the infrastructure, ensure that port numbers used by BigFix Inventory, BigFix, and the database are free to enable communication between those components.
- Firewall exceptions
  Some of the fixlets require that the BigFix server connects to the Internet and downloads necessary files and updates. To ensure that they can be downloaded, relevant web addresses must be accessible from the computer where the server is installed. Add those addresses as firewall exceptions and ensure that they are accessible to the proxy server if you are using it.
- Proxy exceptions
  If the BigFix server uses a proxy for Internet connection to access fixlet sites or prefetch downloads, the BigFix Inventory server must be added to an exception list to ensure that the catalog propagation works properly.
- Installation accounts
  You can install all the infrastructure components as the administrative user. You can also install some components as a non-administrative user but some limitations apply.
- Coexistence scenarios
  This topic describes supported scenarios for the coexistence of BigFix Inventory and License Metric Tool.
  - Coexistence of BigFix Inventory and License Metric Tool in the same infrastructure
    License Metric Tool and BigFix Inventory can coexist within the same infrastructure. They can be connected to the same BigFix server but monitor different sets of computers. You can then use BigFix Inventory to discover non-IBM software and measure its license metric utilization on selected computers, and use License Metric Tool to monitor computers on which only IBM software is installed. Thanks to connecting both applications to a common BigFix server, you can manage them by using one console. It makes monitoring the environment much easier.
  - Adding a second BigFix Inventory server
    Available from 9.2.1. Multiple instances of BigFix Inventory can coexist within the same infrastructure. They can be connected to the same BigFix server but monitor different computers that are grouped according to specific criteria. It allows for reporting utilization of license metrics for subsets of computers, managing parts of the environment by separate teams, or distributing the workload by importing data from a smaller number of computers.
- Installing on Windows
  A complete deployment of BigFix Inventory on Windows requires the installation of three components: the BigFix platform, the BigFix Inventory server, and an MS SQL database. Additionally, a BigFix client must be installed on every computer from which you want to collect software inventory data. You can install all components from scratch or add the BigFix Inventory server to the existing BigFix infrastructure. Depending on the environment size, you can install all components on a single computer, or distribute them among multiple computers.
- Installing on Linux
  A complete deployment of BigFix Inventory on Linux requires the installation of three components: the BigFix platform, the BigFix Inventory server, and DB2 database. Additionally, a BigFix client must be installed on every computer from which you want to collect software inventory data. Depending on the environment size, you can install all components on a single computer, or distribute them among multiple computers.
- Configuring secure communication
  To ensure secure communication, BigFix Inventory uses public key cryptography, which is based on algorithms that use two separate keys, a private key and a public key. This key pair is used to encrypt and decrypt communication
- Installation-related tasks
  If you encounter problems during the installation, you can check details related to the problem, fix it, and then resume the installation. If the BigFix and BigFix Inventory servers are in separated networks, you can disable the automatic address lookup to avoid problems with initial configuration. Learn how to check the current application and catalog version to make sure that your installation and initial configuration were successful.

Coexistence scenarios

This topic describes supported scenarios for the coexistence of BigFix Inventory and License Metric Tool.