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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Requirements and assumptions
BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
Server requirements
To find the latest information about the server requirements, see BigFix Support Matrix.

Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
- Introduction
  BigFix aims to solve the increasingly complex problem of keeping your critical systems updated, compatible, and free of security issues. It uses patented Fixlet technology to identify vulnerable computers in your enterprise. With just a few mouse-clicks you can remediate them across your entire network from a central console.
- BigFix Platform Unicode Support Overview
  BigFix Platform V11 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages. It encodes all data into UTF-8 format, and reports it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies.
- Requirements and assumptions
  BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
  - Server requirements
    To find the latest information about the server requirements, see BigFix Support Matrix.
  - Console requirements
    For details about the console requirements, see BigFix Support Matrix.
  - Client requirements
    To find the latest information about the client requirements, see BigFix Support Matrix.
  - Database requirements
    The database stores all the data retrieved from the clients. Before installing the BigFix server, ensure that the database requirements are met.
  - Security requirements
    The system authenticates all Fixlets and actions using secure public-key infrastructure (PKI) signatures. PKI uses public/private key pairs to ensure authenticity.
  - Network configuration requirements
    The following network configuration is recommended for security and performance reasons:
  - Assumptions
    The process of getting the BigFix up and running varies, depending on your network environment and your security policies.
- Types of installation
  Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
- Managing licenses
  You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
- Before installing
  Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Installing on Windows systems
  Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing on Linux systems
  After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing the clients
  Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
- BigFix Administration Tool
  The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
- Post-installation configuration steps
  After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Managing relays
  Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
- Introduction to Tiny Core Linux - BigFix Virtual Relay
  Follow the step-by-step sequence of operations needed to build the virtual machine, from the downloading of the ISO image to the complete setup and configuration of the BigFix Virtual Relay.
- Setting up a proxy connection
  If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
- Running backup and restore
  You can schedule periodic backups (typically nightly) of the BigFix server and database files, to reduce the risk of losing productivity or data when a problem occurs by restoring the latest backup.
- Upgrading on Windows systems
  Before you begin
- Upgrading on Linux systems
  Before you begin
- SQL Server parallelism optimization
  The performance of an SQL Server database instance can often be improved by small tweaks. Performance might also be hindered by simple oversights. In fact, some SQL Server parallelism settings have suboptimal default values. Moreover, they have to be re-tuned after an hardware upgrade. Other issues might arise from inadvertent hardware configurations, especially when SQL Server is hosted on a virtual machine (VM).
- Known limitations and workarounds
  This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
- Logging
  This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.
- Uninstalling the BigFix client
  To uninstall the BigFix client installed on the various operating systems, see the following sections.

Server requirements

To find the latest information about the server requirements, see BigFix Support Matrix.

Notes about Windows operating systems:

Only the 64-bit architecture is supported for installing the BigFix server and Web Reports components on Windows systems.
The Windows firewall can be either turned off or configured to open the following two ports:
- Port 52311 for UDP and TCP/IP
- Port 8083 for Web Reports and TCP/IP
Windows BigFix servers cannot be migrated to Linux BigFix servers.

Notes about Linux operating systems:

Red Hat packages and all their prerequisites required by BigFix Linux server and Web Reports components:
- cyrus-sasl-lib.x86_64
- libstdc++.x86_64
- pam.x86_64
- krb5-libs.x86_64 (minimum version 1.15)
- unixODBC.x86_64 (for installations with DB2 only)
- msodbcsql17.x86_64 (for installations with MS SQL only)
- fontconfig.x86_64 (Web Reports only)
- libXext.x86_64 (Web Reports only)
- libXrender.x86_64 (Web Reports only)
- libpng12.x86_64 (RHEL 7 and 8 only)
- libpng15.x86_64 (RHEL 9 only)
- numactl.x86_64 (embedded DB2 installations only)
- pam.i686 (embedded DB2 installations only)
- libstdc++.i686 (embedded DB2 installations only)
Installation or upgrade of the Server components on Linux installs the unixODBC RPM package which is a prerequisite for installations with DB2.
Installation of the Server components on Linux installs the msodbcsql17 RPM package and, if missing, its repository. The package is a prerequisite for installations with MS SQL.
If Yum is not configured on the Linux system, you must manually install the unixODBC or the msodbcsql17 RPM package prior to running the installation or upgrade.

Notes about Linux operating systems with DB2:

IBM DB2 11.5 / 11.5.4 / 11.5.5 / 11.5.6 / 11.5.7 / 11.5.8 / 11.5.9. For information about how to install DB2 server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 64-bit, see Installing and configuring DB2.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 x86 64-bit requires IBM DB2 11.5.4.

Notes about Linux operating systems with MS SQL:

MS SQL Server 2019 / 2022. For information about how to install MS SQL server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 64-bit, see Installing and configuring MS SQL.

Disk space and other requirements

For details, see BigFix Performance & Capacity Planning Resources.