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Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Types of installation
Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
Moving from evaluation installation to production installation
You can install and configure a BigFix environment in evaluation mode and later decide to upgrade the environment to production by converting the evaluation license to production without reinstalling the entire environment.

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 V9.5 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies. Your organization might look similar to one of the examples below, depending on the size of your network, the various bandwidth restrictions between clusters and the number of relays and servers. The main constraint is not CPU power, but bandwidth.
- 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.
  - Evaluation installation
    When you run the evaluation installation, you do not need to buy any license files from HCL. The evaluation installation configures BigFix as a Try and Buy product, so you can try it first and buy a license later.
  - Production installation
    If you purchased a license from HCL, you can perform a production installation.
  - Moving from evaluation installation to production installation
    You can install and configure a BigFix environment in evaluation mode and later decide to upgrade the environment to production by converting the evaluation license to production without reinstalling the entire environment.
- 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
- Upgrading on Linux systems
- 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

Moving from evaluation installation to production installation

You can install and configure a BigFix environment in evaluation mode and later decide to upgrade the environment to production by converting the evaluation license to production without reinstalling the entire environment.

After you install in evaluation mode you can decide to:

Let the evaluation license expire. When the evaluation license expires the environment will stop working.
Upgrade the evaluation license to production without reinstalling the environment from scratch. You must ask for a license update from evaluation to production.
From the License Overview dashboard check for any license updates:

Run the BESAdmin to propagate the change:

You can also wait for the BigFix server periodically checks of license changes. When license updates are available, it processes and propagates them to the environment.
When the masthead is propagated, you can enable all the sites that are included in the production license you have bought. All the sites that were included in the evaluation license but are not included in the production license you have acquired are disabled.