Reference: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg22004592
AFAIK, Caching to clients is not possible through BigFix, But there is always a misconception that pre-caching helps clients to cache the downloads directly in the endpoints. Can someone please correct me if am wrong and also let know, if there is an option to cache directly on endpoints.
Thanks in advance
On that same link, “Method 2” involves using the File Precache Wizard from the BES Support site. I think that method does get the file all the way down to the endpoint (but not sure whether it downloads “all fixlet downloads selected” or “only relevant fixlet downloads”)
@JasonWalker Thank you. But, I would not use that, It caches everything (not-relevant stuff). Is there any better way to do that, we have several baselines with 100’s of fixlets/tasks and would like to pre-cache it directly on the endpoints instead of its primary relay.
Send the Actions early, with a start date in the future, and select the “Start downloads before constraints are satisfied” checkbox in the Take Action dialog.
That’s what we have been doing it till date, But this way it caches only on the endpoints’s primary relay right? and the downloads will be moved to the endpoints during the action start time which will cause a delay!
OH, I see what you mean. Either the doc is wrong, or my expectation on the behavior is incorrect. I’ve seen that “precache downloads” speeds up my patch times, but my local networks might be fast enough that the clients are actually grabbing from the local relay at execution time.
The docs are right. The agent will download the needed items to its precache space when an action shows up with the “Start downloads before constraints are satisfied” checked (presuming it has some other condition to make it wait). It will only download “at execution time” if the download is not available at that time.
Be aware that the cache could be cleared by other items doing the same thing, or the cache itself could be too small for the payload you are delivering.
@AlanM thank you for chiming in. But your statement and the one stated in the document are contradicting.
Btw, can you please provide the path of the precache?
One way to tell “for sure” is to test it.
Pick a computer you can test with (your workstation?) and deploy an action to the computer.
Deploy an action with the Pre-Cache option selected. Give a good separation between when you deploy and when the Action should take effect.
Keep an eye on the BigFix Client Logs (I recommend a tool like the free version of Baretail). You should see it mention downloading the content. Once it has done so, you can go look through the __BESData folder to visually verify that the installer has been Pre-Cached on your endpoint.
NOTE: One thing to keep in mind, and @AlanM might be able to chime in here, if you do this to a Baseline, will it attempt to Pre-Cache ALL the content included in the Baseline, or only those items that are Relevant to your endpoint?
Yes, @TimRice is correct about Baselines partially. The clients will always only download the files they need (so only the downloads from relevant fixlets), not all downloads. There has been work to change how baseline precaching is done to make it more efficient in a case where the cache size is too small.
The document you provided ( http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg22004592 ) is specifically for Relay precaching where you precache on the Relay alone and is actually performed by the client that sits on the Relay. The conversation the rest of us are having is about the Take Action Dialog setting “Start downloads before constraints are satisfied discussed here as Method 1 ( http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg22003022 )
So if you use the Take Action setting, the client definitely does download the files for its action prior to the beginning of execution.
