We wanted to share a little gotcha that we experienced from the 7 -> 8 upgrade. Our deployment uses a remote database and nt authentication. In this scenario, you need to run the BigFix Server service as an AD user now, instead of the local system account as in the past.
We were unware of this and fought with a problem of the clients not perfoming any actions - most of the day and were working with support - then (A HUGE Thanks to the Fixlet Team) a Fixlet popped into the console - “WARNING: BES Server may not be able to connect to database” with a fixlet ID of 752.
We read the upgrade docs, but did not notice this mentioned. There is a very big probability we missed it. Either way, we hope this saves someone else some headaches.
“Version 8.0.584.0 of the BES Server is now available, but the current BES Server is running from a remote database using NT authentication which cannot be upgraded through a BES Fixlet message. Please follow the instructions in the link below to manually upgrade your BES Server. Note that when upgrading the BES Server, you need to configure the BES Root Server service to login as a user with access to the remote BES database.”
I had the same issue jspanitz, and was also going to warn the community. I was able to push an action, but never recived any updates within the console. Then I changed login user on the service and it started working.
Perhaps you upgraded in the same fashion as we did. We downloaded the update manually and installed it on the server. We did not use the fixlets - actually, when I did the download Sunday night, I don’t think the fixlet content was even there yet (Weeeee - Bleeding Edge).
@Ben - I think it would be good in the future if this type of requirement was captured in the release notes
I was going to push the fixlet, but then it said that it cannot be done when you have a remote DB, so I also manually downloaded it and ran the Server Upgrade. I was done with that in 20 minutes, then it took another hour to figure out the Service issue. Oh well, now I know for our Prod upgrade.
Kevin, thank you for updating that doc so quickly. I’m sure the “early adopters” are the only few who will experience the issue, but including that in the upgrade notes is a must have. Thanks again.
My only other possible suggestion would be to build a warning into the installer and / or into the diags that run after the install.
The BES Computer Remover utility we had running as a scheduled task was failing to run. We only noticed this when we saw a bunch of duplicate computer names in the console. Turns out the version we had (3.0.1.50) does not work with the version of the database used in BigFix version 8. So off to the BigFix Utilities web page (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/install/downloadutility.html#bescomputerremove) to grab the latest version.
The website says the version is 3.0.1.52 but when downloaded the .exe says it is version 3.0.1.54. Either way, the upgrade fixed the incompatibility.
I recently noticed that the fixlet to deploy a relay no longer contains a 2nd action to specify the install location. I have created a ticket with BigFix Support , but just an FYI to the community.
When will version 8 be relevant to everybody? I have it but it is greyed out. It fails the very first test which is (maximum seat count of client license <= 5000) more than 5000 clients. Am I missing something?
