Installation of BigFix Insight

Hi BigFixers,

I want to install BigFix insight in my environment. I have a environment of 1-100 Desktop & servers.
So can i keep my BigFix Database, insight database and tableau server/DB on same server?

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Sheetal

@play2win, have you reviewed the available documentation regarding BigFix Insights?

Hey Sheetal.

I would recommend separating the BI (tableau) Box from the machine running the Insights DBMS as well as the BigFix DB.
The preferred architecture should be to have a standalone machine for tableau. Tableau is a power hungry application and tends to utilize a-lot of resource. Tableaus hardware requirements can be located here: https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/requ.htm, so as you can see there minimum config is not a small resource lift. Another option is tableau does have cloud offerings, and with the insights server hosted on-prem, and tableau engaged off-prem, this should actually work well typically (but it depends how you craft your reports, our OOTB reports will work well in this configuration). We have done our tests with similar remote configurations so this we know works for the OOTB reports.
Now all that said, i think for your configuration cloud would probably be the best in your situation, your a relatively small environment, and allocating a resource within there minimum specs seems overkill. personally in your config id look @ there cloud option.
Best of Luck !

V/R

Mike

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Thank You @cmcannady @mpaishon.
I will try the cloud offering of tableau.

Hi Everyone,

I have one more question. Is MS SQL SERVER 2019 standard edition is compatible to BigFix 10 platform ?

Thank you!
Sheetal

MSSQL 2017 is the only one that works for all BigFix 10 platform applications across the board, though some individual components may support 2019.

See here: Detailed system requirements

It isn’t entirely obvious if the database section of this document applies to all parts of bigfix, but after some investigation I was able to confirm that MSSQL 2017 is the latest that works everywhere.

Thank You @jgstew.
@mpaishon it would be really helpful if you share any reference link for cloud offerings of tableau.

Regards,
Sheetal

I’m struggling a litte bit looking at the requirements:

SQL replica/offline copy of the BigFix Enterprise Database Ingestion data source.
Note: DB2 is currently not supported.

We are running BES root on linux with DB2 as BFENT Database. What does the above mean in this case ?
I assume we need an (MS)SQLDB as replica/copy of BFENT?

Tableau license agreement to run and view Insights Tableau workbooks. At the minimum, one Tableau Creator license is required. You can use the explorer/view licenses to view workbooks.

I understood, we have to purchase an extra license to use tableau. Without tableau, BigFix Insights is more or less useless ?

@MatthiasW, I would say that BigFix Insights is absolutely useful with or without Tableau. Insights is a data lake and can be front-ended by any number of BI tools including Tableau, PowerBI or any open source project of your choosing. Tableau reports were provided at GA for Insights due to customer feedback.

Unfortunately you’ll have to wait for the version of Insights that supports the Linux/DB2 schema as it differs from the Win/MSSQL variant.

@mpaishon, can you or OM provide an ETA on Linux/DB2 support for Insights ETL?

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Today we do not support BigFix Insights ingesting from a DB2 core. This is something we are exploring, but there are no hard timeframes associated at this point.

I can say at this point SQL 2017 is the minimum version, 2019 has not been qualified for the platform (BFE) although i believe that is planned , although I cant state timeframes there. Once BFE is qualified to 2019 , I think Insights will follow shortly.

Assuming you had a MS SQL BFE, we do not support ingesting from a live BFE source at this point (to mitigate the impact to BFE core operations). Typically customers have a backup methodology in place, and insights is designed to leverage the backup as the BFE dataource (this copy of the BFE database) is conveyed as the replica requirement. In general you should not allow insights to ingest from a live BFE datasource.

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https://buy.tableau.com/ Tableau is something customers can choose to leverage as their BI tool. This link provides their offerings. Understand HCL is not bundling or reselling Tableau, but this link should help clarify their offerings and get you started.

Hope that helps.

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