Importing your data

Data related to your hardware and software inventory must be imported separately. It means that first you must use the adapter for BigFix to import your hardware inventory directly from the platform, and then the adapter for BigFix Inventory to import your software inventory.

Hardware inventory

To import complete hardware inventory from BigFix, Integration Composer retrieves a set of computer properties that describe details of assets that are deployed in your environment, such as the number of processor cores, memory, host names, and so on. These properties are included in a number of analyses that collect this data from your endpoints and upload it to BigFix. All of these properties along with analyses and action sites in which they are contained are described in the mapping table for BigFix. Before you use the BigFix adapter to import you hardware inventory to IBM Control Desk, ensure that all of the action sites listed in the mapping table are enabled and that the corresponding analyses are activated. For more information, see BigFix mapping table.

When all of the analyses are activated, you can start importing your hardware inventory to IBM Control Desk by using Integration Composer. To complete this task, you must define the data source connections so that both the source and the target database is recognized by Integration Composer, create a mapping that describes the way in which your data should be transformed and imported, and then run this mapping to start the import:
  1. Define your data source connections.

    This procedure must be completed twice to define the connection for a source and for a target. To define the source, choose the BigFix data schema that is called BigFix 9.0. The target is the Maximo database that is used by IBM Control Desk. This data schema is called Deployed Assets 7.5.

  2. Create a mapping.

    While creating a mapping, you import the mapping file that provides instructions to Integration Composer on how to transform and import your data. The mapping file for BigFix is IEM90ToDPA75.fsn.

  3. Run a mapping.

    Run the mapping to start importing your data. You can do it from a command line which is the quickest option, or by using a properties file or a prefilled script. In case of frequent imports, you might want to choose the prefilled script because you can save the required parameters and then reuse them with each import.

Software inventory

Your software inventory, together with PVU and RVU data, is imported directly from BigFix Inventory. No additional configuration is required because all the necessary computer properties are already available in BigFix Inventory. The procedure for importing your data is similar to the one for BigFix. In the same way, you define the data source connections and create a mapping, however you must use the dedicated data schema and mapping file:

  1. Define your data source connections.

    This procedure must be completed twice to define the connection for a source and for a target. To define the source, choose the BigFix Inventory data schema that is called BigFix SUA 9.1. The target is the Maximo database that is used by IBM Control Desk. This data schema is called Deployed Assets 7.5.

  2. Create a mapping.

    The mapping file for BigFix Inventory is IEMSUA91ToDPA75.fsn.

  3. Run a mapping.

    Run the mapping to start importing your data.

Results

After you run the mapping, your data is imported from BigFix Inventory. You can now log in to IBM Control Desk to view the imported data.