18.05 enhancements

This section contains information about enhancements in the version 18.05 of BMC Remedy AR System.

Related topics

New Remedy Management Console, a single interface to manage the server group

The Remedy Management Console enables management of all operations across the server group along with the following features:

Ease of monitoring operations and administration in a server group.
Visibility into server queues for critical processes.
One click operation to start or stop server processes and enable or disable logs
Apply configurations settings consistently to all servers in a server group.

No existing configuration or management screen is affected. The existing screens are still available with the same functionality. The Remedy Management console is an additional interface that provides cross-server capability.

As a best practice use the Remedy Management Console to manage the configurations stored in the Centralized Configuration.

For more information, see Configuring and monitoring AR System server groups.

Effective management of the settings under Centralized Configuration

You can choose to define global-level and local-level configurations for the settings under Centralized Configuration. This ensures consistent setting of configuration parameter in a server group and enables you to maintain flexibility of local-level configurations.

Global-level configurations are defined for all servers in a server group. Local-level configurations are defined for an individual server. Any configuration in the centralized configuration that is specified under the Component Name field with an asterisk (*) is a global-level configuration and applies to all servers in the server group.

As a best practice use the Server Group Configuration screen of the Remedy Management Console to set the global-level and local-level configurations.

For more information, see Managing AR Server Group components by setting global-level and local-level configurations.

BMC Remedy Deployment Application enhancements

BMC Remedy Deployment Application now has the following additional capabilities:

Integrate custom application with BMC Remedy Deployment Application

BMC Remedy Deployment Application has an extensible framework that allows you to promote objects from your custom application across development, QA, and production environments. You can also promote data from out-of-the-box Remedy IT Service Management application objects that are currently not supported by the Development to Production functionality.

For more information, see Integrating a custom application with BMC Remedy Deployment Application .

Additional out-of-the-box options for Application Object

You can use BMC Remedy Deployment Application to promote an application object across development, QA, and production environments. In addition to Task Template and Task Group Templates, you can now promote Incident Templates, Work Order Templates, and Change templates by adding them to a deployment package.

For more information, see Promoting application objects by using BMC Remedy Deployment Application .

Promote CMDB CDM definitions across environments

You can now reliably promote CMDB CDM definitions across development, QA, and production environments by using BMC Remedy Deployment Application.

For more information, see Promoting CMDB CDM Definitions across environments .

Role-based access to create and deploy a package

In BMC Remedy Deployment Application, you can now define role-based access to enable users to perform different operations based on their need. This access enables users who are not administrators to perform operations such as creating, viewing, copying, and deploying packages.

For more information, see 2019-10-21_03-49-49_BMC Remedy Deployment Application roles and permissions.

Command line interface to manage a package

You can promote data and definitions across development, QA, and production environments by using the command-line interface (CLI). You can perform multiple command-line operations such as Build, Import, Export, and Rollback.

For more information, see Using a command-line interface to manage a package.

Protect your environment by importing BMC signed packages

All packages offered by BMC are digitally signed. Digitally signined package protects your application from malicious code and secures your environment.All packages offered by BMC are digitally signed. Digitally signed package protects your application from malicious code and secures your environment.

For more information, see Protect your environment with secured package deployment.

License Management enhancements

The License Management enhancements introduced in this release aims to simplify the following:

Configuring license limits
Assignment of licenses
Consumption of licenses
Analytics and reporting of license consumption

Note

The existing licensing system will continue to work as before even if you do not configure the new licensing enhancements. The new licensing enhancements require AR System Server components and Mid Tier at 18.05 version.

Enhancement	Description	Reference topics
Automatically logging user license consumption in the AR System Historical License Usage form	To make sure that the data in the AR System Current License Usage form and the AR System Historical License Usage form is accurate and is in sync with each other, the current license usage information is now recorded on the AR System Historical License Usage form along with the AR System Current License Usage form. Additionally, when the user logs out, the records on the AR System Historical License Usage form are updated with the release time of the license. The AR System Historical License Usage form is a single point of reference from where you can determine who is consuming user licenses; whether currently or over a certain period of time in the past. Note: As per the behavior in the earlier releases, the AR System Historical License Usage form captures license consumption data in a consolidated form from all the servers in the server group.	Recording and tracking license usage
Configuring license limits, assigning licenses to users, and controlling and reporting license consumption in alignment with how the user licenses were purchased	To configure license limits, assign licenses to users, and control and report license consumption in alignment with how user licenses were purchased, BMC is providing support for bundled licenses. As a system administrator, you can now assign bundled licenses to the users, which are used to access the BMC Remedy AR System server and the applications. You can select the following additional options while adding licences from the AR System Administration Console (System > General > Add or Remove Licenses): 2015 Pricing Model 2007 Pricing Model Also, while creating a new user or modifying an existing user, you can assign the bundled licenses to the user.	License types for users to access BMC Remedy AR System server Adding or removing licenses Adding and modifying user information
Improved concurrent license server consumption analysis in a server group	For the system administrator to have access to the accurate license consumption data across all the servers in a server group, multiple enhancements have been made to the BMC Remedy AR System Administration Console > Manage User Licenses form. Additionally, for the Server - Current Users and Application - Current users, the Licence Grant Time details are displayed. Using this new information, the BMC Remedy AR System Server Group Administration Console now allows you to see the data across all the servers in a server group.	Viewing user license information Licensing for server groups
Adding license configuration, control, and auditing for BMC Knowledge Management	As a system administrator, you can now control the license capacity by configuring the user license limit for Knowledge Management. Additionally, you can also generate a license audit report that includes the license usage information for Knowledge Management. Make sure that the Knowledge Management Module license for the Knowledge Management application is added through the Add or Remove Licenses form in the AR System Administration Console. For more information, see Knowledge Management permissions. Note: The Knowledge Management application currently does not enforce users to have a Knowledge Management license. If any users do not have a Knowledge Management licence and if you assign them the licenses in this release, after upgrading to a future release (where it is enforced), they can continue to use these assigned licenses to access the BMC Knowledge Management system without any additional configurations.
Enhancements to license usage	To gather information about license usage, each BMC Remedy AR System server scans the system approximately every 45 minutes and writes the results to LicenseReport.txt. From this release, as a backup, the server also uploads the LicenseReport.txt file in the database. During the next scan after 45 minutes, if the server does not find the LicenseReport.txt file in the ARServer/Db directory, the backup file gets downloaded from the database and is updated.	Generating a license usage report

What's changed in this release

Enhancement	Product behavior in versions earlier than 18.05	Product behavior in version 18.05
Renamed AR Definitions	The Content Type field on the Deployment Package Information form shows the following types: Add Def Delete Def	The Content Type field on the Deployment Package Information form is renamed in order to give more clarity about the content type you are selecting. The content types are renamed to; Add AR Definitions Delete AR Definitions
New Status on AR System Deployment Management Console		AR System Deployment Management console has the following new statuses: Importing This status is displayed when a package import is in progress. Rejected This status is displayed in the following scenarios: A package deployment is rejected because you select Yes in the Allow Binary Payload from BMC only field on the Deployment Management Configuration form and you try to import a payload that is not provided by BMC. A package deployment is rejected because you try to deploy a package that is not specific to a version. For example, you try to deploy patch 1 for version 9.1.03 on version 9.1.04. Processing error This status is displayed when the plug-in is not working.
Delete old server entries from the server group	You cannot delete old server entries from server group metadata tables using the `arsrename` utility.	You can delete old server entries from the server group using the `arsrename` utility. This avoids the effort of manually deleting the entries. You must perform this activity only on the primary server. For more information, see Renaming the AR System server.
Mid tier thread dump interface	You use a command to collect thread dumps.	Use the thread dump interface on the Log Settings page to collect logs of all the Java activities in your environment. This interface offers a simplified process of collecting thread dumps. For more information, see 2020-04-15_04-42-15_Configuring the Log Settings page.
New filter in the web.xml file	The following filters were existing in the web.xml file: `XSSProtectFilter` `CLICKJACKFILTER` `HSTSFilter` You need to manually edit the web.xml file to enable these filters.	The following filters are merged; `XSSProtectFilter` `CLICKJACKFILTER` `HSTSFilter` and a new filter `HttpSecurityHeaderFilter` is defined in the web.xml file. The new `HttpSecurityHeaderFilter` filter is enabled out-of-the-box.
New security header for mid tier		The new security header `X-Content-Type-Options` prevents the browser from doing MIME-type sniffing. The following headers are enabled by default in the web.xml file: `X-XSS-Protection` `X-FRAME-OPTIONS` `Strict-Transport-Security` `X-Content-Type-Options` Add the following code to the web.xml file to disable the headers. Add the following code to disable the `X-XSS-Protection` header: `<param-name> xssProtectEnable</param-name> <param-value>No</param-value>` Add the following code to disable the `X-FRAME-OPTIONS` header: <param-name> clickJackEnable</param-name> <param-value>No</param-value> Add the following code to disable the `Strict-Transport-Security` header: <param-name> hstsEnable</param-name> <param-value>No</param-value> Add the following code to disable the `X-Content-Type-Options` header: <param-name>contentSniffEnable</param-name> <param-value>No</param-value> Use the following code to enable options of the `clickJackMode` parameter: `<init-param>` `<param-name>clickJackMode</param-name>` `<param-value>SAMEORIGIN</param-value> </init-param>` Options of the `clickJackMode` parameter: DENY — Prevents any domain from framing the content. SAMEORIGIN — (Default) Enables the current site to frame the content. ALLOW-FROM uri — Allows the specified 'uri' to frame this page. For example, ALLOW-FROM http://www.example.com
Disabled web report drill down	Web reports can contain links to the underlying data. This allows you to drill down by clicking the links to open the underlying records and work interactively with the data in the report.	You cannot drill down a web report. For more information, Opening the records in a Web report.
Remedy Data Migrator	Previously, if you migrate data using the Delta Data Migrator package having the User and CTM:People forms' data, the users could not login using those credentials after migration, since the passwords were changed during migration due to new password policy. The login fails due to the change in password storage format. When you login to BMC Remedy AR System server 9.1, the password is stored in a new format. However the older clients use the old client libraries to export data and assume that the password is in old format, and we cannot export the User form data and import back. Workaround: Export the User and CTM:People data from Midtier version 9.1 or later. Execute the data, see DDM Migration. Using Data Import, import the User and CTM:People data that is exported in Step#1.	Starting with the version 18.05, from the Delta Data Migrator (DDM) package the following two forms are removed: User CTM:People Workaround: Export the User and CTM:People data from Mid Tier. Or use the AR Export utility to export data. For example: `arexport.bat -u “User name” -x “Server name” -p "password" -T portnumber -form "User" -datafile "sample file path\name.arx" -q "'6' >= ""epoch timestamp of DDM date"""` `arexport.bat -u “User name” -x “Server name” -p "password" -T portnumber -form "CTM:People" -datafile "sample file path\name.arx" -q "'6' >= ""epoch timestamp of DDM date"""` Using Data Import, import the User and CTM:People data that is exported in Step#1.
The arsignald log file is removed	The arsignald log file tracks the startup and shutdown of the arsignald daemon and all signals sent between servers in the group.	This is automatically handled by the encache RMI cache replication in the AR System Server.