Updated BES Clients to identify Windows 10?

Usage and Config
1

Any word on when updated clients will be available that will identify Windows 10?

The 9.0.876.0 client currently identifies it as Unknown 10.0.9926.

1 Like
2

According to this note it is supported in 9.2 fp5

https://support.bigfix.com/bes/changes/fullchangelist-92.txt

I have not applied it yet or confirm.

1 Like
3

From: 9.2 Patch 5 for IBM BigFix Platform

4

So … no updated client in the v9.0 or v9.1 branches of the code?

5

You can update any Windows 10 computers to the 9.2 fp5 agent in a 9.0 environment without issue.

I tend to keep the Mac agents on the newest agent version regardless of root server version due to important fixes with the newer OSes.

Same goes for Windows 10.

1 Like
6

Correct. There are no plans to release this change in older branches at this point. It is generally our practice to release support for new operating systems in the versions that are current and not go back to older revisions that may have issues with the new OS.

1 Like
7

Any chance you would be willing to share some ‘best practices’ on this?

1 Like
8

I suppose that is my ‘best practice’

In general, you should keep your agents & relay versions equal to the root version, but with exceptions:

For all Macs and any very new Windows OS, then it is best to update to the latest BigFix agent available and keep updating it as new agents are released. Older Windows OSes don’t need to be as aggressively updated because presumably they are already well supported and working with the older agents, but there could be a fix available in a newer agent that applies to older OSes, in which case it may make sense to update to the latest version. You don’t typically need to wait until IBM declares a version of BigFix as “officially” supporting a new OS, you should just install the latest agent and report any bugs you find, especially if the alternative is to just not have any management at all. If you depend on BigFix for management, then it might be smart to wait for it to be officially supported for the new OS before doing a major roll out of that new OS across your organization, but that level of caution usually isn’t needed if you have been using the newest agent on the newest OS without issue for a while.

You should have some machines running the BETAs for all new OSes with the latest BigFix agent installed for testing. I switched most of my test machines to Windows 10 BETA that I do testing on and never had an issue.

In general for all agent updates, you should push them out progressively over time and not all at once in case there is an issue that causes the agent upgrade to break which would orphan your clients. This is rare, but it has happened.

As for root server upgrades, you should do those as you see fit. The larger the environment, then the more caution warranted. Regardless you should have good backups and disaster recovery in place so that you can roll back if needed. In general it is a good idea to wait a month before applying a minor update & 6 months before applying a major version upgrade. If you are going to upgrade to a new major version, it should almost always be the latest one available unless it was just released within the past 3 months or less… in which case I would recommend waiting a bit and then upgrade to that version.