BigFix a SQL Express

Usage and Config
1

Hello BigFixers,

I have a question - I am running a demo environment with one BigFix server and one MS SQL Express server. The environment has not been running for long - since June 2025 and I have these two servers with BigFix agent in the deployment. Everything worked, but now the DB for BigFix is ​​over 13GB and I am over the SQL Express limit. Deletion via BES Admin did not help.

Any idea? Can you help me?

It is a demo environment where I show BigFix to customers.

Thank you

Radim

2

I don't think there's any case where you'll get BigFix to work with SQL Express, due to those small size limitations; it's a configuration we haven't supported in years.

You could check with your legal team or Microsoft reps whether your use-case fits the requirements for SQL Developer Edition. I'm honestly not sure whether this would be considered development/test or production usage.

Otherwise, I think you'll need to purchase a real SQL license.

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3

Again, I'm not a licensing expert, but this link Can we install SQL Server Developer Edition in our Non-Production Environment, which will save some licensing cost? - Microsoft Q&A at least implies that Developer Edition could meet your use-case and gives reference on where to find more.

If Developer Edition does work for you, that would be great news, because it has all of the same features as a production SQL Server, including the same database size capabilities, with the only caveat that legally you cannot use it for Production workloads.

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4

If this works for you, you can switch an existing sql express db to developer edition. You don’t need to change anything else or migrate.

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5

Thank you everyone, the migration tool from Microsoft helped and the BigFix demo environment is now fully functional again. However, the database is already 16GB. Is it normal? I don't remember it growing so fast. Thanks

6

Have you set-up audit cleaner and stuff like that to keep the db under control? How much content and devices have you enabled? Rule of thumb - if you are not using it, don’t turn it on as it only slows things down and grows the db/agent cycles…

7

Yes, audit cleaner is set up, number of endpoints is five, number of sites is 24. So no big infrastructure, that's why I'm surprised

8

Much of it is about which Analyses you activate. Especially if you are using the Compliance Checklists, some of those Measured Values will show every file that does not match some prescribed permission or ownership; I've seen those return as much as a half gigabyte of text for a single computer

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