MSI Self Heal

Usage and Config
1

(imported topic written by herrm91)

I am new to BigFix and have been playing around with multiple methods of deploying software packages. I have a couple of concerns and am looking for suggestions as to the best practices for deploying software packages with BigFix.

1.) It appears that the BigFix agent will always download the source locally to the client, then install. My concern is that this will use up quite a bit of space on the local machines. Is there a method of using the BigFix relays as the source and installing directly from there? If this were possible, it would also take care of the windows installer self healing issue I foresee, otherwise I have to leave the source files locally on every machine.

2.) After I import a package with the Software Distribution Wizard, I can find it on the primary BigFix server but don’t see it anywhere on the relays. It is my understanding that it should get distributed out to the relays and the clients will access from the there. The actions seem to run fine but I want to be sure that the downloading is taking place from the relays and not all from the primary. How can I tell this is happening properly?

Thanks

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi herrm,

  1. It is possible to source the MSIs from other locations, but then you have the issue of how the BigFix Agent (which runs as the SYSTEM account) will have access to a network resource (you can use AD computer permissions or you can use null session shares for this), but we generally prefer moving the source files to the computer for the install (whether or not you keep them there) because it reduces the complexity of the install. If resources

  2. The files are transferred with file names as their sha1 value to avoid filename conflicts. If the agent is reporting to a relay, it will try to download files from it alone.

Ben