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Remote Control
BigFix Remote Control application helps to communicate between different components, clients, and endpoints within BigFix environment.
Remote Control Installation Guide
By using Remote Control you can remotely support and control thousands of PCs and servers, on an enterprise scale, from a central location or directly, in peer to peer mode.
Overview of the Remote Controlsystem
Remote Control operating requirements
Target requirements

Remote Control
BigFix Remote Control application helps to communicate between different components, clients, and endpoints within BigFix environment.
- Release notes
  A summary of changed or new features and enhancements included in BigFix Remote Control.
- Remote Control Installation Guide
  By using Remote Control you can remotely support and control thousands of PCs and servers, on an enterprise scale, from a central location or directly, in peer to peer mode.
  - Audience
  - Versions
  - Terms used in this guide
  - Overview of the Remote Controlsystem
    - How to use the guide
    - Remote Control operating requirements
      - A Basic installation
        The most basic installation requires the Remote Control target and controller components. Use the two components to start a peer to peer remote control session, for which the policies are defined only at target level.
      - Installation with support for firewall and NAT traversal
        In some environments, it is not possible to open a port in a firewall to enable controller to target, or target to server communication for all endpoints. It is more appropriate to enable traffic from, or traffic to a single computer that acts as a gateway to traverse the firewall.
      - Installation with support for remote control sessions over the internet
        Sometimes the target that requires support is out of network sight in an internet location. For example, in a hotel or an airport lounge.
      - Server requirements
        The hardware that is required by the server component depends on the number of computers that are administered and the frequency that is defined for their status updates.
      - Server environment guidelines
      - Controller requirements
        The Controller is a Java™ based application that can run on the following operating systems with the listed prerequisites.
      - Target requirements
      - Gateway requirements
      - Broker requirements
  - Get started
    Now that you understand the terms and components available in Remote Control, you can identify which components you need to install:
  - Install the Remote Control components
    The Remote Control components can be installed in two ways. If you have access to the BigFix® console, use a deployment fixlet to install the components.
  - Utility for extracting the component installation files
    Remote Control provides a utility that you can use to extract the installation files that are required for each component.
  - Enable secure target registration
    To prevent unauthorized targets from registering with the Remote Control server, you can enable the secure registration feature and use tokens to authenticate the target.
  - Install the driver for smart card authentication
    The BigFix® Remote Control Target provides an installation option to install a virtual smart card reader driver. You can also install the driver by running a fixlet in the BigFix console.
  - Manage the component services
    After you install the Remote Control components, if you change their configuration, you can stop, start, or restart the component services.
  - Enabling email
  - Configure LDAP
  - Configure TLSv1.3
  - Federal information processing standard (FIPS 140-2) compliance in Remote Control
    The US Federal information processing standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2) is a cryptographic function validation program that defines security standards for cryptographic modules that are used in IT software.
  - NIST SP800-131A compliance in Remote Control
    Remote Control version 10.0.0 components can be configured for NIST SP800-131A compliance.
  - Verifying the server installation
  - Recover from installation errors
  - Uninstall the components
  - Upgrade from previous versions
  - Maintaining the target installation
  - Properties that can be set in the target configuration
    You can configure target properties either during or after installation. The operating system on the target system determines which properties can be configured. The target properties determine the actions that can be carried out during a peer-to-peer session. If you set a server URL and set the Managed property to Yes, the actions are determined by the policies that are set on the Remote Control server.
- Remote Control Administrators Guide
  This guide is for users who want to administer Remote Control.
- Remote Control Console User Guide
- BigFix Remote Control Controller Users Guide
- Remote Control Target Users Guide
- Remote Control On-demand Target Guide
  Use Remote Control to start remote control sessions over the internet with targets that do not have the target software installed.
- Remote Control V10 Readme

Target requirements

Minimum requirements

The computer on which you install the Remote Control target must have at least the following specifications:

At least a 1 GHz Intel™® or AMD processor.
A minimum of 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit).
A minimum of 50 MB hard disk space.
Adequate space for storing session video recordings. Recordings are stored on the hard disk and their size can vary depending on the duration and screen activity of the session. On average a 5-minutes session, 8-bits mode, can use about 2 MB of space. In true color 24-bit mode, recordings can take more space.
The maximum display resolution per display is 7680 pixels by 4320 pixels.
The maximum number of displays is 8 by 8.

Network requirements

Before you install the Remote Control, ensure that the below network requirements are met:

Incoming TCP connections to the Target port 888 (or any other port that is configured for the Remote Control sessions) must be allowed in the firewall rules.
Traffic on the locahost loopback address 127.0.0.1 between trc_base, trc_gui, trc_dsp and trc_ft on ports between 49152 - 65535 must be allowed.

Note: Antivirus or Intrusion Detection System software might also block this traffic.

Operating system support

The following operating systems are supported:

Windows™ 7
Windows™ 8 and 8.1
Windows™ 10
Windows™ 11
Windows™ Server 2012
Windows™ Server 2012 R2
Windows™ Server 2016
Windows™ Server 2019
Windows™ Server 2022
Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ 6.0 or later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ 7.0 or later
SUSE Linux™ Enterprise Server 10 or later
SUSE Linux™ Enterprise Server 11 or later
SUSE Linux™ Enterprise Desktop 10 or later
SUSE Linux™ Enterprise Desktop 11 or later
CentOS 5.0 or later
CentOS 6.0 or later
macOS 11.x BigSur
macOS 12.x Monterey
macOS 13.x Ventura
macOS 14.x Sonoma

Note: On macOS 11.1, ensure the monitor screen resolution is set to one of the following: 1280 x 768, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 1024, 1360 x 768, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 900, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1080, or 2880 x 1800. This is because, the following screen resolutions can result in a black screen on the Controller during a remote session: 1400 x 1050, 1768 x 992.

Supported architectures

Intel™ IA®-32 (also known as x86, x86-32)
Intel™ 64 or AMD64 (also known as x64, x86-64, EM64T)
Apple Silicon

Note: IA®-64 (also known as Itanium™) processors are not supported.