My Experience with Bixdata

I have been trying to use Bixdata fro a few days now. I have found it quite a challenge to get working.

My system comprises of and VMware ESX server running several windows 2003 servers.

I installed the bixserver on one of the virtual windows servers.
I installed agents on a number of the virtual windows servers.

I am still trying to get the agent on the ESX server to work properly, I followed the "complete" intructions on this site - end result neither bix server or desktop could connect.

Then I tried using the "how to forge" instructions, a little better but still no connection.

Spent time looking through these forums, eventually got enough pieces of information to finally get a connection - achieved by opening a port on the ESX firewall.

The ESX server shows in the bix desktop but is not identified as a VMware server. All the other vmware guests are identified as VMware guests and hosts.

More time spent looking through the forums - find some posts relating to manually editing some xml file - at first I wasn't sure which file to edit, the one on the server? or the ones on each agent? - changed all of them to be sure. stopped and restarted all agents as well as server.

End result -- all guests still showing as guests and hosts, ESX server still not showing as VMware host.

Ok I think maybe I didn't edit the xml files correctly - spend lots of time chnaging them.... do I point to the folder that holds all the guests? Do I point to each guest folder individually? Do I need to put the path to the actual VMware server files? do the paths need to have a / at the end? So I just try it all.

End result - much more time spent doing "simple" install and still not working.

So after my longwinded message I get to a question or two....

Is it possible to get the agent on ESX working correctly? has anybody done it? If so mind sharing the exact steps you took to get it to work?

Is it possible for the Bix people to actually provide step by step instructions to do this on ESX? rather than just download, untar, run agent - which doesn't work.

The install instructions need to include the steps to modify the xml files, open the firewall etc

I know this is a free community edition - BUT from my perspective I'm not going to spend money on the professional version because it obviously doesn't work as advertised. unless the free edition is vastly different from the pro version?

Also I have tried clicking the "ask live chat online" button but its not a chat live online at all it's a link to a form?