We are experiencing an issue with the BES client on our Citrix Presentation Server 4.0.
When we installed the BES client on the server, there was no issue.
However, as user are logging into the server we are finding multiple instances of the BES Client executable that are running for each instance of the logged user. An uninstall/reinstall of the BES client fixes the issue for a while but then it reoccurs. (See attached picture for error effects).
Is there anyway to prevent this?
Is there a change I need to make to the system?
Or is there a different executable for a Terminal Server/Citrix desktop?
By design, the BigFix Agent UI is launched for each user. The reason this is necessary is because securely showing message boxes and restart dialogs to end users requires a process in user space (in newer versions of Windows like Vista, this is a requirement). Additionally, the BigFix “Offers” functionality is designed to be shown to each user so they can choose what to do, which is another reason we need the BESClientUI.exe running for each user. So there isn’t really anything to “fix” from this point of view.
In BigFix 7.1, we are adding the option to allow you to only show the BESClientUI.exe to users on the local system (rather than launching for remote connections). This will give you the flexibility to choose not to launch the BESClientUI.exe for Citrix or remote users (although you won’t be able to show remote users messages/offers/restart dialogs). Although, we do recommend you consider keeping the BESClientUI.exe active for all connections because it is a small, non-invasive process that uses minimal resources.
We haven’t announced the official release date yet, but BigFix 7.1 will be available within a couple of months (I have to be vague… sorry…)
I was pondering this problem as well. You get enough users on one box even a minor running process could take up a lot of MEM. I run 80 or so users on a box X average 856k for each BESClientUI and it adds up.
One way you could get around this is create a GPO, or even NTFS permissions, and deny a group execute on the EXE. That way admins or specific groups, etc could still get the the UI and see offers, and another group would get denied so you don’t have 80 instances of the process running.