Relay requirements and recommendations

Generally, a relay uses minimal resources and does not have a noticeable impact on the performance of the computer running it.

However, if several clients simultaneously request files from a relay, a significant amount of the computer's resources might be used to serve those files.

The requirements for a relay computer vary widely depending on three main factors:

  • The number of connected clients that are downloading files.
  • The size of each download.
  • The period of time allotted for the downloads.
For details about the relay system requirements, see System Requirements .
Note: On Linux computers in which the deployment port is not the default (52311), an installation of Perl is required for the relay functions to work as expected.

Here are some further recommendations:

  • Computers running the relays must have BigFix agent installed.
  • Configure the internet-facing relays in your BigFix deployment as authenticating relays.
  • Workgroup file servers and other server-quality computers that are always turned on are good candidates for installing a relay.
  • The BigFix relay must have a two-way TCP connection to its parent (which can be a server or another relay).
  • For BigFix Version 10 GA, the Fixlet to install the relay requires at least Internet Explorer 5.0 or later versions to work correctly. For BigFix Version 10 Patch 1 and later, this requirement is no longer needed.
  • The BigFix relay cache size can be configured, but is set to 1GB by default. It is recommended that you have at least 2 GB available for the relay cache to prevent hard drive bottlenecks.
  • It is recommended to have at least one Relay per geographic location for bandwidth reasons.
  • Consider throttling the bandwidth usage for Relays downloading files on very slow pipes. It is recommended to throttle the bandwidth usage for Clients that are connecting on dial-up or slow VPN connections. For more information about bandwidth throttling, see https://bigfix-wiki.hcltechsw.com/wikis/home?lang=en-us#!/wiki/BigFix%20Wiki/page/Bandwidth%20Throttling.