Types of software scans (BigFix® scenario)

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The scanner can search for different types of information to determine whether the software is installed. Generally, all types of scans should be run regularly. However, you can choose to run different types of scans at different times or distribute the scan schedule over the computers in your environment to improve the performance of the import process.

Software discovery

Catalog-based scan: In this type of scan, the License Metric Tool server creates scanner catalogs that are sent to the endpoints. Based on those catalogs, the scanner discovers exact matches of the installed software. Scanner catalogs do not include signatures that are irrelevant for a particular operating system.
Package data scan: In this type of scan, the scanner searches the system registry to gather information about Windows and UNIX packages that are installed on the endpoints. Then, the License Metric Tool server compares the discovered packages with the software catalog. If a particular package matches an entry in the catalog, the software is discovered.
Note: Starting from application update 9.2.33, package data scan is not performed.
Software identification tags scan: In this type of scan, the scanner searches for software identification tags that are delivered with software products. Then, the License Metric Tool server processes the tags. Based on the information that they contain, the software is discovered.

Additional scan capabilities

Resource utilization scan: In this type of scan, the scanner searches for software license metric tags that contain information about types of licenses that can be used by a product and their usage. Then, the License Metric Tool server processes the tags. Based on the information that they contain, the maximum usage of license metrics over the last 30 days and its trend value are calculated. For more information, see: Raw utilization of license metrics.
Tip: The scan collects information about license metrics that are reported by products which implemented the ISO/IEC 19770-4:2017 standard. Because the volume of the collected data might be large, do not run this scan if you do not want to monitor these metrics.