How do I determine if BESClient is running on specific endpoints, from the TEM Console?
The client will report at least every X minutes as defined by the heartbeat interval in the console. In the console, go to Menu > Preferences and check to see what the heart beat interval is set to. The default is 15 minutes. If some of your clients are not reporting at least every 15 minutes, check the log file on the endpoint for how frequently the string “Report Posted Successfully” string in the client logs. If the client has reported within the “Mark as offline after” interval, then the client will appear in black. If not, then the client will appear as grey. Online/offline status is solely dependent on the client’s ability to send a report and the server’s ability to receive and process a report. If the client appears as grey in the console, it means a report has not been received for a certain amount of time; it does not mean that endpoint machine is powered off or offline.
Location of Client Logs on the endpoint.
If the client is not generating reports according to the logs, it may be getting hung up on processing other types of activities. If this is the case it may be best to collect Client Diagnostics from the endpoint and then open a PMR with support to analyze the problem.
Thanks for the quick response. I gather, then, that there is no way to use the TEM Console to determine if BESClient is running or stopped. Since I have a small installation, I was able to go over to the computer that was gray and found that the Client was stopped. I restarted it and all is well now, but I am surprised that TEM does not have a way to check this on the Console itself. Even HelathChecks did not pick it up.
Correct. Something outside of BigFix would need to be used to monitor the operatioal status up/down of the BESClient service.
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Does IBM offer such a product? If not, whom?
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Maybe in the Tivoli Monitoring or Netcool product somewhere there is functionality for this. Contact your IBM SalesRep and see what product they recommend. Nagios (https://www.nagios.org/), I’ve heard is a good product as well.
The BigFix console is only aware of what the agent reports. It is impossible for the agent to report it is not running because it can only send reports when it is running.
There is something called the BES Client Helper Service which can be installed on endpoints. It checks in periodically to make sure the client is running and starts it if not. If the BES Client Helper Service ends up starting the client often, then that could be a sign of a problem and the client may need to be reinstalled on that endpoint.
There is an analysis called BES Client Helper Service that will let you know how often the BES Client Helper Service starts up the client, assuming it can do so successfully.
Any remote management tool could have a rare problem on a specific endpoint. There isn’t a great way to solve the problem of only having a single tool when something goes wrong with that tool. This is a universal problem not unique to BigFix.
There is an open source tool for the Mac that can be used to automatically install or reinstall management software that is missing or broken, which could include BigFix: GitHub - google/macops-planb: Plan B is a remediation program for managed Macs
If it is on Windows you could set the service recovery tab to restart on failures.
As others have commented if the client is in a unstable state then you may need to troubleshoot further.
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I have a policy to create a Scheduled Task that checks once an hour to see if the BES Client is running. If it’s not running, the Task tries to start it. If it won’t start, the Task uninstalls & then reinstalls the BES Client.
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Can you share anything as to how you create that task and how it works?
Seems similar but better than the BES Client Helper Service
It would be nice if BigFix had something built in that uses ping or nmap that would periodically scan for the endpoint machine being up or port open and then give a secondary status in the console next to each client machine.
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Or perhaps only do that if the client hasn’t reported in for X minutes.
Using ping or nmap may not actually reflect the status of that particular endpoint unless it has a static IP or static DHCP.
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A confirming ping/nmap that the endpoint is truly offline or non-operational.
We use Tivoli Monitoring on critical servers to monitor the BESClient service and restart or send alert if necessary.
Do we have analysis to check if BES client service is stopped and startup type is set to manual
If BESClient isn’t running on an endpoint, no analysis (old or new) will report back.
then how do we identify those machines and fix it
Unless you are being very aggressive in the way you remove non-reporting clients you can get a report of clients that last reported in >x days ago.
You then remove from this list clients you know to have been decommissioned and you have a rudimentary gap analysis.
You then remediate these by whatever means you have at your disposal.
You should also search this forum for other similar posts and some of the ingenious ways suggested to keep clients running.
@JasonWalker Please please post this method you have for setting the scheduled task to check BigFix Agent service. 
Hi, Can you please share how you have created policy, it is useful for all.