I’m having problems with BigFix Inventory reporting Server Vendor data for Mac machines and Windows or Linux Servers in my environment. How can I configure BigFix Inventory to retrieve this data
Unfortunately, your question is too vague.
What have you done so far? What do you see on the BFI dashboard? Each panel on the top row of the dashboard provides troubleshooting links for the issues presented there.
Did you set up BFI with the Default Scan Configuration?
Thank you for responding. the initiate software scan was setup with the default config. I did not add scan remote shared disks and set a CPU threshold of 15%. The scans were eating bandwidth and this resolved that issue. Now when looking at reports>>infrastructure>>computers and adding the Server Vendor column under configure view, we receive either or “-” for Operating Systems Mac OS X 10, Win 10 10.0, Linux CentOS 6 or 7 Servers, Windows 2008, 12 or 16 Servers. After going through all of this, can you confirm that the data generated for Server Vendor in the report is triggered by the endpoints hardware. Most of these (server anyway) are virtual.
Another question. The Server Vendor data is not recognizing VMWare or Amazon for our virtual servers nor are they associating Apple with our MAC workstations. Is there a way to program BF Inventory to resolve this issue?
How do I program BigFix Inventory to resolve Server Vendor on Virtual Servers as VMWare or Amazon. Also how do I resolve Server Vendor on MACS as Apple?
@BregBF Server Vendor is a property of a Hardware Inventory record, not of a Computer.
Hardware Inventory records are the physical servers used to run hypervisors, and are the hosts of virtualized computers.
In my implementation, Server Vendors contain data like “Dell Inc.”, and “LENOVO”, which are manufacturers of hardware, not operating systems. It is not the property you’re looking for.
You can tag computers running on Amazon cloud using the Fixlet Identify Computers on Public Clouds. Windows Virtual Machines have a property called “Computer Manufacturer - Windows” that you can configure in Computer Properties in BFI to import from BigFix.
So the next question is what is your use case for the information? Operating Systems are software, and in the Installed Software report, you can find the OS and its publisher.
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This is what we are trying to accomplish.
In short, we’re looking for Hardware manufacture; if it’s a virtualized information – it should mention the Server Vendor of that environment like endpoint. Vendor is for the OS and publisher is for specific software’s.
What we have here is like you pointed out, the computer manufacturer - windows property reveals VMWare Inc and we want to capture that information in Inventory. We would like it to be presented as Server Vendor but that is not its purpose.
Q1 - How can we capture that info “Computer Manufacturer - Windows” information in Inventory?
Q2 - Is it possible for a similar property to be created for “Computer Manufacturer - Linux”?
Thanks
This was brought to my attention. The API calls is as follow:
“server_vendor”: {
“type”: “string”,
“description”: “A manufacturer of a physical server.”
}
This value is blank in Inventory for virtual Servers and MAC’s and returning a null value. Is there anything that can be done to assign values within Inventory for virtual servers and MAC’s?
To detect the computer’s manufacturer with a single property, use the following relevance and create a new custom property in BigFix, and call it “Computer Manufacturer”, and set the evaluation period to be every 30 days, since this value never changes.
if (windows of operating system or unix of operating system) then (if (exists dmi) then (manufacturer of system_information of dmi) else ("n/a")) else (if (mac of operating system) then ("Apple Inc.") else "n/a")
Give it a day or three for your BES clients to evaluate and report back.
Next, add that property to BFI using the Management >> Computer Properties. Then, run an import (or wait for the next automatic import) and it will be associated with the Computer records in BFI.
Note that the Server Vendor property in BFI is only associated with virtual machine host server hardware.
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Even though this is a old post, I hope someone can point me in the right direction on MAC Scans for Software Installations. The software scans complete successfully but “Installed Software” is 0 on all MACs. Based on the documentation a scanner is not installed but we should pull some information. The default scan is selected and Package Data Scan is selected. Upload Scan Results is non relevant. I believe that is by design. We are seeing the machines in BFI but no Software Installed. I don’t see an related errors in the Dashboard health widget. Would you mind posting what you know about MAC OS support. And perhaps where I should look to trouble shoot. In the mean time I will plug away. Thank you.