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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
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.
Masthead encoding parameters
The masthead file contains the following two new parameters related to Unicode:

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.
  - Masthead encoding parameters
    The masthead file contains the following two new parameters related to Unicode:
  - Top-down data flow: from the BigFix server to the clients
    The encoding capability when sending data from the BigFix server to BigFix clients is the same as BigFix older versions; UTF-8 support of the top-down data flow is not available in BigFix. The top-down data flow (such as actions, site subscriptions, computer groups, custom sites, and more) works only if you use non-ASCII data that belongs to the FXF encoding.
  - Bottom-up data flow: from BigFix clients to BigFix server
    BigFix Platform V11 uses UTF-8 as the standard encoding system to send reports from BigFix clients to BigFix server. The x-bes-report-charset parameter is set to utf-8 in the masthead and its value cannot be changed.
  - Unicode support requirements and limitations
    This is a list of BigFix Platform V11 requirements and limitations when using non-ASCII characters:
  - Reading and writing files in the specific encodings
    BigFix agent uses UTF-8 as the internal representation of strings.
  - Managing actions on clients with different local encoding
    BigFix Platform introduces the possibility to specify the names of files and folders of UNIX clients in any encoding, even if it is different from the encoding used by 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.
- 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.

Masthead encoding parameters

The masthead file contains the following two new parameters related to Unicode:

x-bes-fxf-charset: codepage_data_from_server_to_clients (for example:Windows_1252)  
x-bes-report-charset: utf-8

where:

x-bes-fxf-charset: Represents the FXF encoding and affects the encoding of the data that is sent from the BigFix server to the BigFix clients (such as actions, site subscriptions, computer groups, and more). Its value is determined by the code page of the system where the BigFix server component is installed, and, for both Windows and Linux systems, can assume one of the values of the Code Pages supported by Windows.
x-bes-report-charset: Represents the report encoding and affects how BigFix clients encode their reports before sending them to the BigFix server. Its value is always utf-8.