I have an environment where the BigFix clients won’t be able to resolve the host name of the BigFix Server. When I install BigFix client locally on a machine, I have specified in the clientsettings.cfg to use the BigFix server ip address instead of DNS name, so the client will start communication with the server without any problems.
But when I use the Client Deployment Tool Wizard in the console to deploy clients, the client trying to reach the BigFix server using DNS name. I have tried to find a solution to this but failed. Any suggestions how to solve this?
In the Client Deploy Tool Wizard, during the ‘Set Advanced Settings’ step, you can include custom settings after clicking the ‘Show advanced settings’ checkbox. You should then be able to specify a custom setting named __RelayServer1 with a desired target Relay/Server for the initial registration as described here. This can certainly leverage an IP rather than a DNS name.
Yes, the setting you reference is certainly useful to override the DNS name of a Relay with either another name, or an IP for the automatic Relay selection process. However, this generally does not apply during a Client’s initial registration.
Thanks for confirming. I thought once the name override setting is pushed, relays make their entries with IP address as well in the relays.dat. does it not help client to identify the relay with IP address even after installing a client through CDT? Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.
As Aram posted, you’ll need to populate a setting on the client which you can do via the Client Deployment Tool.
After your client registers, it downloads a copy of relays.dat which lists all of the relays in your deployment, and will allow for relay selection. If your relays are advertising their IP address rather than DNS names, then your client can then select the relay using its IP address without name resolution.
The problem is that your client won’t obtain the relays.dat, or know about those relays, until your client has performed an initial registration and downloaded the master action site. For that, your client needs to either resolve the root server name (as defined in your masthead file), or have a client setting preconfigured using the CDT. As Aram posted, you can specify a client setting __RelayServer1 to use the specified relay during initial registration.
I usually prefer instead to configure _BESClient_RelaySelect_FailoverRelayList as listed at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Configuration%20Settings . The FailoverRelayList has a few advantages - it doesn’t require ICMP communication when registering, it remains in effect if the client later switches relays, and we can specify several values allowing us to use the same configuration on different networks with differing relay accessibility. I usually configure values here pointing to my top-level relays, DMZ relays, and root servers (including my DSA servers).
