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Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
Infrastructure
The main factor that affects the performance of the BigFix Inventory server is the performance of the underlying infrastructure on which the application server and the DB2 database are running. You must ensure that the recommended requirements are met.
Memory performance requirements
RAM performance metrics such as seek time or memory bandwidth, are strictly dependent on the memory type, which is linked with the processor type.

Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
- Infrastructure
  The main factor that affects the performance of the BigFix Inventory server is the performance of the underlying infrastructure on which the application server and the DB2 database are running. You must ensure that the recommended requirements are met.
  - Memory performance requirements
    RAM performance metrics such as seek time or memory bandwidth, are strictly dependent on the memory type, which is linked with the processor type.
  - Storage performance requirements
    To ensure good performance of BigFix Inventory, it is essential to have good storage performance on the database server computer. The storage performance of the BigFix Inventory server alone is not that important.
  - Using relays to increase the performance of BigFix
    To take advantage of the speed and scalability that is offered by BigFix, it is often necessary to tune the settings of the BigFix deployment.
- Setting up scans and import
  Learn how to improve the scanning and importing activities to optimize the performance in your infrastructure.
- Additional tasks for improving performance
  Learn about additional tasks that you might want to perform to improve the performance in your infrastructure.
- Tuning performance in medium and large environments
  You can learn the possible causes of the most common performance issues in medium and large environments. Follow the tips and the known solutions to these issues to keep the system in good shape and avoid performance problems.
- REST API considerations
  You can use BigFix Inventory REST API to retrieve large amounts of data that is related to computer systems, software instances, and license usage in your environment. Such information can then be passed to other applications for further processing and analysis.

Memory performance requirements

RAM performance metrics such as seek time or memory bandwidth, are strictly dependent on the memory type, which is linked with the processor type.

Restriction: Do not run your server on a virtual machine for which memory compression was enabled, for example in x86 virtualization that is provided by VMware. It is especially important in case of the computer on which the DB2® database is running.

Pay particular attention to the amount of memory that is available for BigFix Inventory and the DB2® application. It is important to monitor the RAM usage on a daily basis because memory usage differs greatly depending on how the application is being used. The main factors besides the environment size include:

The number of concurrent web UI users
The frequency of data imports

Memory monitoring is especially important on the database computer as insufficient amount of RAM can significantly slow down background tasks, such as PVU data aggregation because of memory swapping. Swapping, also known as paging, is the use of secondary disk storage to store and retrieve application data for use in RAM. It is automatically performed by the operating system and typically occurs when the available RAM is depleted. Swapping can have a significant impact on DB2® performance and should be avoided. To avoid swapping, ensure that sufficient RAM is available on the computer so processes do not consume all the available RAM. Use the following Linux™ tools to monitor RAM usage and memory swapping:

top
free
vmstat
or sar

If you notice that there is almost no free memory available to BigFix Inventory and the DB2® processes are being swapped to disk, the best solution is to increase the RAM memory size.