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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.
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.
Configuring email notification for Server Automation
You can configure Server Automation to automatically notify you by email when your Automation Plans have completed. After you have enabled email notification, you receive an email to the email addresses that you specified. The email notification includes details about the success or failure of the plan, and optionally provides comprehensive execution details for each step in the plan. The notification service is disabled by default. To set up email notification, you must install and configure the notification service by running BigFix Tasks.
Uninstalling the notification service
To uninstall the notification service, you run a Task from the BigFix console.

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.
    - Defining step failure behavior settings
      When creating an Automation Plan, for each step in the plan you can define the behavior that occurs if a step in the plan fails. This is known as step failure behavior and is distinct from adding a failure step to a step. You can also set advance failure behavior. Advanced failure behavior enables you to specify a period of time after which to fail the step on targets that have not returned a status.
    - Targeting by computer group
      For each step in your Automation Plan, you can target computer groups as well as individual computers. You can do this by saving computer groups as default targets using the Default Settings feature when creating the Automation Plan, or when running or scheduling your Automation Plan from the Take Automation Plan Action screen. When you target a computer group for a step, the list of computers that belong to the computer group is determined at the time that the step is executed. Therefore, if group membership changes between the time you define the step in the Automation Plan and when the Automation Plan is executed, the system determines which computers belong to the computer group that you have targeted at the time that the step action is executed.
    - Managing pending restart states and automated restart of endpoints
      When you add a Fixlet, Task, or Baseline to an Automation Plan and if the Fixlet, Task, or Baseline contains an action script that requires the targeted endpoints to restart, this results in your plan remaining in a Pending restart state, until the endpoints are restarted. If the endpoints are not restarted, the step remains in this wait state and the Automation Plan is effectively stalled. Pending restart is a wait state in BigFix, and if the endpoints are not restarted, the Automation Plan cannot progress. To prevent this from happening, add a specific Server Automation Fixlet to your plan to automate the restart of the endpoints and configure the Pending Restart settings to continue the plan.
    - Parallel step processing
      You can design your Automation Plan so that steps are executed concurrently. This is known as parallel processing. Rather than the plan running in a simple straight sequence where each step is executed one at a time, one after another, with parallel processing you can run steps that do not have a dependency on each other concurrently. To create a parallel type plan, you must select the parallel plan type and manually set the dependencies between the various steps in the plan. Parallel processing is generally more suitable for advanced automation scenarios.
    - Excluding non-reporting endpoints
      You can define a non-reporting threshold to exclude endpoints that are unresponsive from the target list of your Automation Plans. For example, you might set a non-reporting threshold of one hour, and if some endpoints have been unresponsive for one hour before the point at which the first step in the plan is being processed, these endpoints are excluded from the target list. The exclude non-reporting feature differs from the timeout feature in that non-reporting endpoints are automatically excluded from the target list if they have been unresponsive before system begins processing actions. With timeout, endpoints are targeted and the action is deployed to the endpoints, but the action times out after the timeout period you configured elapses.
    - Configuring email notification for Server Automation
      You can configure Server Automation to automatically notify you by email when your Automation Plans have completed. After you have enabled email notification, you receive an email to the email addresses that you specified. The email notification includes details about the success or failure of the plan, and optionally provides comprehensive execution details for each step in the plan. The notification service is disabled by default. To set up email notification, you must install and configure the notification service by running BigFix Tasks.
      - Customizing notification service Cipher - Windows
        Learn how to add your custom Cipher in the notification service in a Windows system.
      - Customizing notification service Cipher - Linux
        Learn how to add your custom Cipher in the notification service in a Linux system.
      - Uninstalling the notification service
        To uninstall the notification service, you run a Task from the BigFix console.
  - 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.

Uninstalling the notification service

To uninstall the notification service, you run a Task from the BigFix console.

Procedure

From the Server Automation domain, expand the Notification node, then Setup and Maintenance, then Fixlets and Tasks.
Depending on your platform, select Task 155 Uninstall Latest Notification Service or Task 158 Uninstall Latest Notification Service (RHEL).
Click Take Action to run the Task to uninstall the email notification service.

Results

Shortly after the uninstallation Task has completed, the installation Task becomes relevant again.