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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Upgrading on Linux systems
Before you begin

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.
- 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
  - BigFix client backward compatibility
    Before upgrading the BigFix server to Version 11, ensure that it is at Version 10.0.7 or later.
  - Upgrade paths for BigFix 11
    The following tables show the upgrade paths to BigFix 11:
  - Automatic databases backup upon upgrade
    You can configure your BigFix Server to automatically run the backup of the BFENT and BESREPOR databases before and after running the upgrade process.
  - Before upgrading
  - Upgrade prerequisite checks
    The following prerequisite checks are automatically run by the upgrade procedure on the BigFix Server.
  - Automatic upgrade
    You can proceed with an automatic upgrade using the "BigFix - Updated Platform Server Components version x.x.x Now Available!" Fixlet.
  - Manual upgrade
    Use the manual upgrade instead of the Fixlet upgrade when you upgrade a DSA multiple server environment.
  - Rollback
    If you made a recovery copy of your BigFix Server data and configuration as described in Platform/Installation/c_backup_procedure_linux.html#c_backup_procedure, you can roll back your BigFix Server to its original status, before running the upgrade, following the instructions provided in Platform/Installation/c_recovery_procedure_linux.html#c_recovery_procedure.
- 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.

Upgrading on Linux systems

Before you begin

Carefully review the minimum OS and database requirements for BigFix Server.
Ensure that the current version you are upgrading from is at Version 10.0.7 or later.

Upgrade the BigFix components to V11.0 strictly in the following order:

The BigFix servers and consoles. These components must match their versions and must be upgraded at the same time (consoles with a version earlier than or later than the server version are not allowed to connect to the server and database).
The BigFix relays.
The BigFix agents.

During the upgrade, the versions of the different components must respect this rule: server version >= relay version >= client version

As a best practice, follow the instructions provided in Running backup and restore to make a recovery copy of your BigFix Server environment and to ensure that, if needed, you can run the rollback.

For upgrading a DSA environment, see Manual upgrade.

Note: When upgrading the BigFix Linux Server from previous versions to Patch 1, you cannot modify the BigFix database deployed in your environment from DB2 to MS SQL.