BigFix, Big Questions
BigFix - http://www.bigfix.com
Alright, so BigFix is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. IGN swears by it, as does Verizon, along with a slew of other companies. It's supposed to be a cross-platform management solution that takes the best features of products like SMS 2003, ISA 2004, etc. . . and combine them together into one application. Right now, I'm doing a project for my company, researching alternatives to things like SMS and WSUS for patch management.
Most likely, we'll end up using WSUS, since it is pretty dead-on for what we need, save for a few hoops we have to jump through because not all the machines we need to update are part of our AD forest, (and trusts can't be set up, either.) This product, BigFix, seems to be a viable solution, since we run a mixed environment of Windows 2000/2003, Fedora 4 ES, and a few variations of BSD. (That means I wouldn't have to spend the time to research any WSUS-like services for the *NIX distrobutions, after I'm done with our Windows boxes.) However, we have absolutely no idea if this product is any good.
My question is this: has anyone out there used BigFix, does anyone have any insights as to how good it actually is, what platforms it actually supports, any issues/problems/praise you can bring to my attention, and a clue on what kind of licensing costs we'd be looking at?
To help organizations meet compliance needs, improve security, and insure operations continuity, BigFix delivers highly scalable, security configuration management solutions that provide real-time visibility and control of servers, desktops and laptops – no matter where they are or how they connect to the network. With BigFix, discovery, assessment, deployment, remediation and removal of a software vulnerability or non-compliant configuration or application can happen in seconds or minutes instead of hours or days. All without adding expensive infrastructure or additional staff!
The results? Greater visibility, better security, more reliable services and reduced costs and overall management load on IT.
Alright, so BigFix is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. IGN swears by it, as does Verizon, along with a slew of other companies. It's supposed to be a cross-platform management solution that takes the best features of products like SMS 2003, ISA 2004, etc. . . and combine them together into one application. Right now, I'm doing a project for my company, researching alternatives to things like SMS and WSUS for patch management.
Most likely, we'll end up using WSUS, since it is pretty dead-on for what we need, save for a few hoops we have to jump through because not all the machines we need to update are part of our AD forest, (and trusts can't be set up, either.) This product, BigFix, seems to be a viable solution, since we run a mixed environment of Windows 2000/2003, Fedora 4 ES, and a few variations of BSD. (That means I wouldn't have to spend the time to research any WSUS-like services for the *NIX distrobutions, after I'm done with our Windows boxes.) However, we have absolutely no idea if this product is any good.
My question is this: has anyone out there used BigFix, does anyone have any insights as to how good it actually is, what platforms it actually supports, any issues/problems/praise you can bring to my attention, and a clue on what kind of licensing costs we'd be looking at?
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Comments
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rossonieri#1
Member Posts: 799 ■■■□□□□□□□
hello there,
same with me dealing with ZenWorks from N$,
that was long time ago NDS - but to remember again? i dont think so.
cheers : )the More I know, that is more and More I dont know.