BigFix is pleased to announce the availability of version 8.0.584 of the BigFix Platform!
Version 8.0.584 has a streamlined user interface for both the Console and Web Reports, agents for new platforms including CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and SuSE 11, and relays on RHEL and Solaris. Additionally, seven languages are supported at launch for platform components: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
The upgrade is available to all BigFix customers at no charge. BigFix recommends upgrading whenever possible to take advantage of the new features, optimizations, and bug fixes. As with all BigFix platform upgrades, you can upgrade any component manually or by using Fixlet messages available on the BES Support Fixlet site.
We are currently running 7.2.5.22 and are planning on upgrading in the next week or two. I just checked my “all fixlet messages” and see the jobs listed under the BES Support Site but they are not showing as applicable? Is that normal or something that is going to be phased in as relevent?
This is normal, we’re phasing when the upgrade content becomes relevant by deployment size. Currently the upgrade Fixlet messages are targeted at deployments under 5,000 seats. You can make a custom copy of the upgrade Fixlet message and remove that part of the relevance if you want to go ahead and upgrade now.
Adding some commentary from my personal point of view:
This was the longest release we have ever had (in terms of elapsed time and time spent developing and testing). A big part of the long release cycle was because we did a complete user-interface overhaul and we put a lot of work into trying to get this right (including customer tests, usability reviews, etc). Like when any application changes a big part of its interface, it takes a little while to get used to… When I first started using 8.0, I wasn’t sure if I liked the changes (because I had been using the old version for a long time), but I very quickly started to like the new version better. And at this point when I look at older versions of BigFix, they seem rather old and clunky.
Web Reports is also redesigned almost completely and hopefully you guys will be much happier with the new way that reports are built and displayed.
There are lots and lots of smaller changes that people requested (many from this forum) that we think you guys will like. Just to name a few: pre-caching download option, faster action propagation times, “recent changes” overviews, action script colorization, process exit code retrieval, and many more.
Also, we added a bunch of new capabilities to the agent, which means that some of our applications will improve (for instance, the agent can now track standby time, which will enhance Power Management) and they should also be useful for the Relevance pros out there.
I think it might be good to start up a separate thread for comments/questions on 8.0 rather than use this thread (these major update threads can get very long).
Just found out about the upgrade today when several of my IT Ops people here complained that the BES Console installed on their PCS stopped working. The theory is that the BES clients on their PCs got autoupdated and that somehow screwed with the locally installed console.
Ah well…
Congrats on the new release… looking forward to getting our instance upgraded /
None of the upgrades will happen automatically. You (or another authorized Console user) will need to explicitly deploy the upgrade Fixlets before any of the upgrades occur.
None of the upgrades will happen automatically. You (or another authorized Console user) will need to explicitly deploy the upgrade Fixlets before any of the upgrades occur.
Ben
Isn’t there some fixlet/client setting that basically says “update clients to new versions automatically when they come out” ? I seem to remember setting something like that as a policy in the past.
In any event, no big deal… I plan to upgrade everything tomorrow.
Nope. All upgrades (and all other actions) need to be explicitly authorized… We do this purposefully so that you can be sure that BigFix can’t change things on your computers without your permission.
I think it should be safe… It is our long process to roll out the upgrade by increasing seat counts, but it is up to you when to apply it…
All the upgrade info is in the Upgrade Fixlets… You can upgrade the server and wait to upgrade the relays/agents until later… I think the agent upgrade is 6-7MB…