We are currently pushing BigFix to our onshore and offshore sites. There are some sites we have are on internet connectivity charge per kilobytes. Usually those sites have 1 to max of 10 workstations. Knowing the fact of the connectivity we do plan to lock those machines from receiving any patches fixlets etc.
The question still arise, how much bandwidth consume by BESClient that has been locked just reporting back and forth. Of course on site with more than 1 machine we can deploy relay in the environment. Still even there is only 1 machine at the location, we were ask to estimate the monthly recurring cost.
Best option… don’t install at all. Unfortunately that is not an option given to us. Any advise would be appreciated.
The answer to this question depends heavily on which Fixlet sites you have subscribed, how many operators that you have, how many actions you take, and various settings that you have set…
Usually we say that the idle agent will use less than 30-50kb a day spread slowly thoughout the day in small 1-5 kb chunks… But again, this depends a lot on usage…
I recommend you check a client’s bandwidth with a monitor to see the specifics of your sites… Note that you might consider using “Quiet Mode” (http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=247) to make the agent sleep completely for big parts of the day to avoid using any bandwidth if you think it is too expensive…
Couldn’t they setup the remote sites to be an air gapped network so that they will never send traffic across the expensive link? Just create firewall or router rules to not let the BigFix traffic across the WAN link and then configure as if it were air gapped. You would still have the agents doing what they do best, however no incurred cost.
There are tons of ways you can tweak the communication behavior. It sounds like your situation is unique and complex enough that it might be worth speaking with our professional services team. They can spend a few hours understanding the issues and then make recommendations for you.