How to create a bigfix lab

Is there a walkthrough on how to create a BigFix lab.

I assume you mean creating a :LAB/DEV environment for the purpose to testing/training?
When I saw the POST title - my mind went to BigFix Labs site/module :wink:

If you are trying to create a LAB environment (which I would encourage) is not hard. I would start with “peeling” off a few license, like 5, from the TEMS license portal. This would allow you to create a new MASTHEAD for your development environment and go thru the install process and even deploy the endpoint to a few DEV devices (they can’t be in BOTH BigFix environments at the same time, but you can move them between the two with a Fixlet). This lets you understand the moving parts (installing) and an environment that people are not afraid to play in - can’t hurt anything really.

The next question I would ask - is what are you trying to do? I ask this because this now comes down to how much your PROD/REAL environment needs to match your DEV environment in terms of configuration, DSA, Inventory and Compliance Module, SQL (remote or local - Express or not etc.). It it is hard to JUSTIFY the hardware/software resources for a DEV environment if it is only for training/testing purposes.

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For a small 5 seat dev environment, you can get away with a single VM (or hardware) for all of the BigFix infrastructure. This is generally how we test internally in most cases. You don’t need a high availability DSA environment with remote SQL cluster to get a lot out of a dev/test environment even if it isn’t a perfect match for production.

This is definitely a good option, especially if you are primarily using it to write custom content or practicing with the REST API, in which case patch only licenses could be sufficient.

If it helps, we have a 3 tier environment. Dev, QA, and Prod. QA and Prod mirror each other as much as we can, just with lower server specifications and less relays.

Dev - is a single server setup, with ~50 licenses. It also has a dedicated cloud plugin server and 2 relays (our needs). We test new versions, sites, features, etc here.

QA - Two servers with DSA, dedicated SQL boxes, a few relays, dedicated cloud plugin server. We use this to test our design, policies, new features we want to use from Dev, etc.

Prod - Two servers with DSA, dedicated SQL boxes, ~12 relays, dedicated cloud plugin server. Prod, though we have not yet moved into production as we are new to BF still.

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