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Server Automation
Server Automation provides powerful automation. You can use it to sequence automation actions in steps across multiple endpoints.
Automation
BigFix Lifecycle Server Automation provides you with technology to sequence actions, such as the deployment of Fixlets, across multiple endpoints. To sequence automation, you create an Automation Plan. Your Automation Plan contains all of the actions for your end-to-end automation sequence.
Plan-specific log files
You can access an individual log file specific to each Automation Plan that you run. This provides you with a useful tool to easily analyze or debug any issues that occurred during plan execution.

Server Automation
Server Automation provides powerful automation. You can use it to sequence automation actions in steps across multiple endpoints.
- Overview
  BigFix Lifecycle Server Automation provides you with the capability to automate provisioning workflows. You can automate a sequence of Fixlets, Tasks, and Baselines across different endpoints, such as servers or computers. Server Automation exploits the agility and scalability of BigFix to deliver powerful functionality in a lean and efficient manner, with minimal impact on your network.
- Automation
  BigFix Lifecycle Server Automation provides you with technology to sequence actions, such as the deployment of Fixlets, across multiple endpoints. To sequence automation, you create an Automation Plan. Your Automation Plan contains all of the actions for your end-to-end automation sequence.
  - Introducing Automation Plans
    You can create Automation Plans to automate your workflows. Automation Plans run multiple Fixlets, Tasks, or Baselines on a set of endpoints that you specify. Each Fixlet, Task, or Baseline can run on a different set of endpoints and steps can run in parallel or in a sequence. When you create your Automation Plans, you can set and save a set of default endpoints, default parameters, and filters for each step in the Automation Plan. This increases the ease-of-use and facilitates faster reuse of plans. You must run your plans from the Automation Plans dashboard in the Server Automation domain.
  - Creating an Automation Plan
    An Automation Plan contains all of the data required to run a sequence of Fixlets, Tasks, and Baselines across multiple endpoints. You create your Automation Plans in the Server Automation domain. You can select a site and a domain to host your Automation Plan and define a sequential or parallel processing path for the steps in the plan. Each step can have an optional failure step that runs if the step fails. You can also save a set of default targets for both computers and computer groups, default parameters, and filters for each step in the Automation Plan.
  - Running baselines from a site
    You can automatically execute all of the Baselines that are contained in a particular site against a set of endpoints. You do this by running an Automation Plan that contains a Server Automation Task designed to execute all of the Baselines in a site. Any new Baselines that you create in or add to that site are executed automatically every time that you re-use the Automation Plan.
  - Plan-specific log files
    You can access an individual log file specific to each Automation Plan that you run. This provides you with a useful tool to easily analyze or debug any issues that occurred during plan execution.
  - How your Automation Plan is processed
    Your Automation Plan consists of a number of steps. When you run it from the Automation Plans dashboard in the Server Automation domain, your Automation Plan is processed by the Automation Plan Engine in the order you specified when creating the Automation Plan. If you run an Automation Plan from any other dashboard or panel, it will fail.
  - Automation Plan Engine shut down and recovery
    The Automation Plan Engine detects particular conditions under which it can no longer function correctly. For example, if credentials become invalid, the Automation Plan Engine cannot function as normal. In these situations, the Automation Plan Engine automatically shuts itself down. The BigFix server plugin service is responsible for restarting the Automation Plan Engine after the period of time pre-configured in the PlanEngine.xml file in the \BigFix Enterprise\BES Server\Applications\Config directory for Windows® or /var/opt/BESServer/Applications/Config/PlanEngine.xml for Linux®. The default is 30 seconds, but you can change this by modifying the PlanEngine.xml file. On restart, the Automation Plan Engine resumes from the processing point at which it shut down. The Automation Plan Engine automatically recognizes any Automation Plans that have already started, the stage of processing at which the shutdown occurred, and then continues running these Automation Plans.
  - Editing an Automation Plan
    You can change an Automation Plan by editing it in the Automation Plans dashboard. Typically, you might want to copy an existing plan or sample plan and then customize or update it for a different automation scenario by changing steps or by assigning different targets. You can make changes to a plan quickly and easily. You can easily replace an existing step with a new step, move a step to a new position in the plan, or add a new step before or after an existing step. If you replace an existing step with a new step, the replacement step maintains the targeting and failure step settings of the original step.
  - Copying an Automation Plan
    You can create an Automation Plan by coping an existing Automation Plan. You can then edit the data in the Automation Plan that you copied.
  - Deleting an Automation Plan
    You can delete Automation Plans in the Automation Plans dashboard. If you want to delete several Automation Plans, you must delete each Automation Plan individually. When an Automation Plan is deleted, the Automation Plan actions and step actions are not deleted.
  - Running an Automation Plan
    You run or schedule your Automation Plan from the Automation Plans dashboard in the Server Automation domain. If you run or schedule an Automation Plan from any other dashboard or panel, it will fail. The Automation Plan Engine runs the Automation Plan, one step at a time, by opening, processing, and then stopping each step in the order that you specify when you create the Automation Plan. The Automation Plan Engine calculates the state of each step and uses these states to control the execution of the Automation Plan. In the Automation Plans dashboard, you must specify one or more endpoints for each step in an Automation Plan. You must specify the correct value for each parameter in a step or a failure step to ensure that the step or failure step can run successfully. Only steps that are Fixlets or Tasks can have parameters.
  - Viewing Automation Plan actions
    You can view a list of all the Automation Plan actions and the corresponding step actions in the Automation Plan Action Status panel. This list includes all schedules Automation Plan actions.
  - Stopping an Automation Plan
    When you run an Automation Plan, an Automation Plan action is generated to process the Automation Plan. The Automation Plan action then generates step actions, when required, when the preceding step is complete. If you want to stop an Automation Plan that is running, you must stop the Automation Plan action before you stop the step action. To stop a pending Automation Plan action, you must stop the Automation Plan action only.
  - Exporting an Automation Plan
    You can export an Automation Plan from the All Content domain in the BigFix console. You can edit an exported Automation Plan in an external editor and then import the Automation Plan into a different console or deployment. Other console operators can edit and import Automation Plans that you export.
  - Changing default values of parameters
    You can set or change default values of parameters that are not displayed when you are editing an Automation Plan from the Automation Plans dashboard. When you are editing an Automation Plan, you might not be able to change parameter values using the user interface. However, you can change the default values of parameters by changing the action script for the Automation Plan in the All Content domain.
- Virtualization
  Virtualization is a software technology that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same host computer at the same time. Additional uses of virtualization include the quick creation of new systems for testing, training, and demonstration. Using virtualized computers saves the cost of hardware, management, and administration of the server infrastructure.
- Configuring your system
  This section describes how the BigFix architecture is relevant for Server Automation. It also describes how Server Automation can affect BigFix performance.
- Sample Automation Plans
  Server Automation is shipped with a number of sample Automation Plans that you can run out of the box. To run these Automation Plans out of the box, ensure that the Fixlets contained in them are available. Typically, you would substitute some of the Fixlets contained in these samples with particular Fixlets that you want to run. Use the information in each of the following sections to find out more about each of the sample plans.
- Server Automation content
  Server Automation provides content that you can use to automate processes and software deployment.

Plan-specific log files

You can access an individual log file specific to each Automation Plan that you run. This provides you with a useful tool to easily analyze or debug any issues that occurred during plan execution.

When the Server Automation system starts, it creates a custom site called Server Automation Plan Log Files (if this site was not created previously). Plan-specific log files are available from this site. As the number of plan-specific log files in the site expands over time, it is good practice to remove unwanted log files.

How it works

When you submit a plan for execution and the plan begins to run, a log file is generated in the <BES Server>/Applications/Logs directory. The plan name is <Plan_Action_ID>.log.txt. On plan completion, this file is automatically uploaded to the Server Automation Plan Log Files custom site. For information about using and viewing site files, see Viewing site files.

Key points

This feature is enabled by default and you do not need to perform any configuration to enable it.
You can preview log files that are 200 KB or smaller.
To view log files larger than 200 KB, you must use the REST API. If a log file is larger than 200 KB, you see a The log file is too large to be previewed message in the Preview.

Complete the following steps to download log files larger than 200 KB through the REST API:

Enter the following URL in a browser:

https://<server-host>:<server-port>/api/site/custom/Server%20Automation%20Plan%20
Log%20Files/files

This returns something similar to the following, in this example there is one plan log in the site:

<BESAPI xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="BESAPI.xsd">   
  <SiteFile Resource="http://<server-host>:<server-port>/api/site/custom/Server%20Automation%20
     Plan%20Log%20Files/file/1215">
    <Name>1189.log.txt</Name>
    <ID>1215</ID>
    <LastModified>Mon, 23 Feb 2015 12:03:04 +0000</LastModified>    
    <FileSize>322113</FileSize>
    <IsClientFile>0</IsClientFile>
 </SiteFile>
</BESAPI>

When prompted, enter your BigFix operator credentials.
Use the URL in the Resource attribute returned in the output to download the plan-specific log file, as follows:
```
http://<server-host>:<server-port>/api/site/custom/Server%20Automation%20Plan%20
Log%20Files/file/1215
```