Before upgrading

Before you Begin:

You must enable the “Enhanced Security” before upgrading BigFix Platform to Version 11 as described in V11 Overview.

Perform these steps before upgrading the BigFix components:

1. Ensure that the BigFix WebUI service is stopped before starting to upgrade the BigFix components, and do not start it again until the overall upgrade procedure completes successfully. This step applies any time, regardless of whether the WebUI is installed on the same system as the BigFix Server or on a different system.
2. Close all BigFix consoles.
3. Back up your BigFix server and database as described in Server Backup.
4. Back up your license.pvk,license.crt, and masthead.afxm to a separate location on the BigFix server or to a USB key.
5. Ensure that you have enough free space for the BigFix database. The free space projection involves a number of factors: the row counts of specific tables, the density of the data pages storing the tables and indexes, and specific database options for log management and table compression.
6. Upgrade SQL Databases.
7. Increase the replication interval to prevent the replication from failing repeatedly during the upgrade. For additional information, see Changing the replication interval on Windows systems.
8. Upgrade the BigFix components in the following order:
   1. The console and the server must have the same version and must be upgraded at the same time.
   2. Relays
   3. Clients
   Servers, relays, and clients do not need to match versions and the upgrade of these components can occur at different times. Clients with earlier versions can continue to report to later versions of relays or servers, but might not have all the functionality of the later releases.
   Note:

   Existing BigFix proxy configurations defined on the server are automatically migrated to the V10.0 proxy configuration settings and behavior. For more information about BigFix V11.0 proxy configuration settings, see Setting up a proxy connection.

   If the existing proxy configuration exploits the BESGather_Service, during the migration you are prompted to enter the password of the user that you specified for the BESGather_Service. The migration process uses that password to access the Internet Explorer and to map the proxy configuration settings into the set of registry keys used in V11.0 and documented in Proxy configuration settings for server and relays.

9. In a Distributed Server Architecture (DSA) environment, run the BigFix server upgrade on the primary server first, then upgrade the secondary servers.
10. After the upgrade, run the BigFix Administration Tool to do the following tasks:
    • Update a remote database.
    • Set the NIST security standards, if needed.