The Plugin Portal is a component that allows BigFix Platform to manage devices that do not have a BigFix Agent (otherwise known as “proxied agents”) installed.
The Plugin Portal enables BigFix features on the devices it manages - it gathers sites, evaluates Fixlets, and runs actions on the discovered devices. In essence, it acts as a Bigfix Agent for all the discovered devices. For instance, if you have 1000 discovered devices, the Plugin Portal evaluates all the subscribed Fixlets 1000 times and runs the relevant actions 1000 times. With this premise, it is fundamental to optimize any overhead involved in using the Plugin Portal primarily for performance-related reasons. The easiest way to optimize performance overhead is by filtering the content Plugin Portal manages – for instance, by keeping the content that’s not created for the proxied agents from reaching the portal. Even before evaluating any content, a subscribed site causes all of the Fixlets in the site to be gathered, parsed, and saved in in-memory structures. If a Fixlet is not relevant, it requires processing with consequent consumption of resources.
Doing away with site subscription is the first and most effective way of reducing unwanted overhead. Avoid subscribing proxied agents to sites that host content for native agents alone. If your site must be subscribed to proxied agents too, filter out the native content (see Fixlets and Analyses). In view of preventing device subscriptions, the BES Support site already helps you filter content for proxied agents. Most of the content gathered by BES Support and BigFix External sites include a “X-Relevant-When” rule that includes the following expression: if exists property "in proxy agent context" then (not in proxy agent context) else true.
Note: Plugin Portal exposes the same “context property” provided by the BigFix Proxy Agent named “proxy agent context”. In addition, it also exposes its own “plugin portal context”. When building a relevance by using the “proxy agent context”, you filter the proxied agents reported by both the Proxy Agent and Plugin Portal. A relevance with “plugin portal context” filters devices managed by Plugin Portal only.
When creating a custom site, include a similar rule. For details, see the following section. In case the content of the custom site is explicit for proxied agents, it is still necessary to filter any non-dedicated content (see Fixlets and Analyses).
Custom sites
In case of custom sites, you can filter out proxied agents by setting the Agent Type equals Native condition in Computer Subscriptions:
Since the Agent Type property for proxied agents is in the Proxy - <plugin data source name> format, you can obtain the same result as that of excluding the proxied agents by setting the condition as follows:
Following are some values reported by data source plugins:
- Amazon Web Services
- VMware
- Google Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Azure
- MDM - MacOS
- MDM - iOS
- MDM - iPadOS
- MDM - Android
- MDM - Windows
In general, by filtering the data source, you can create custom sites dedicated to proxied agents including or excluding plugins:
Fixlets and Analyses
If you cannot disable proxied agents for an entire site, add a relevance to filter Fixlets and Analyses that are not explicit for proxied agents. For instance, include a rule as follows:
if exists property "in proxy agent context" then (not in proxy agent context) else true
As in the case of custom sites, you can add dedicated filters for Fixlets and Analyses to include or exclude proxied agents for plugins - for example, a relevance targeted at only VMware proxied agents, like this:
( if exists property "in plugin portal context" then ( in plugin portal context ) else false ) and ( data source as lowercase contains "vmware" )
When you apply these best practices in your environment, the load on the Plugin Portal will significantly reduce thereby improving its performance. Response and operating times will decrease and so will the use of your machine and network resources.
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Author
Emilio De Angelis is a senior software engineer and a BigFix developer. After a long stint at IBM developing and supporting a variety of software products, he joined HCL in 2018 and is currently working on BigFix Platform projects.
Review and editorial credits
Shivi Sivasubramanian is a senior-level technical author and editor with a demonstrated history of working in the technology industry. A firm believer in the magical power of words, she loves helping the community deliver expressive, minimalist, and user-friendly content. Shivi currently leads a team of information developers in BigFix.