When dealing with AIX LPAR or Solaris Sparc architecture, the Computer Type information is always reporting as “N/A”. It is very hard to identify which one is a physical server (AIX WPAR or Solaris LDOM or Global zone) or logical server (AIX LPAR or Solaris Local zone) specially working with ILMT or BFI product where Server ID and Server Serial Number columns are reporting the same value. We need to be able to distinguish the differences for the Computer Type property starting from the BigFix Client side. There is no issue dealing with other architecture such as VMWare or Hyper-V.
This matter will some impact for ILMT and BFI where the Serial Number and the Server ID columns might not be able to identify which server is the physical or virtual if Serial Number information is reporting all the same value and then Computer Type information is reporting “N/A”. It would be very useful if BigFix can get the Computer Type inspector to report information for Solaris and AIX platforms.
If someone has access to the AIX WPAR or LPAR environment, perform the following steps:
Identify only one physical AIX server which has LPAR and WPAR partitions.
Then run the following commands from LPAR and one of the WPAR partitions and send back the result from each partition.
Provide me the hostname of the physical, LPAR and WPAR where the above commands are executed from. This helps me to compare the results from LPAR and WPAR partitions.
Then we could review the results from the above commands and understand which attribute can be used. Then create a custom task to run a specific command and custom analysis to retrieve that value back to BigFix.
Something like that as a workaround until Computer Type inspector is fixed.