BMC Remedy AR System checks
The BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility performs the following checks on the BMC Remedy Action Request (AR) System. The expected results are described in addition to corrective actions you can take if a check fails.
Best Practice
The following checks are described:
Approval Socket Test
Description | This check verifies that both the |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that both |
AR System Email Engine Service Name Check
Description | (Microsoft Windows only) This check verifies the following:
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result | The check is successful if both the following conditions are met:
If any of the conditions is not met, the check fails and displays an error message. |
Corrective action | If the value of BMC_EMAIL_SERVICE_NAME parameter from ARSystemInstalledConfiguration.xml file does not match with the value of BMC Remedy Email Engine service from services.msc, delete the BMC Remedy Email Engine service. Then, proceed with the upgrade. During the upgrade, the installer will create a new BMC Remedy Email Engine service in services.msc. Alternatively, you can update the service name in the ARSystemInstalledConfiguration.xml file. The default location of AREmail directory is C:\Program Files\BMC Software\ARSystem\AREmail .
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ASJ Thread Count Test
Description | This check verifies that the ASJ Thread count s pecifies the total number of worker threads that process various approval requests. |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that the value of ASJ-Thread-Count parameter is set to a nonzero value in the Centralized Configuration. |
Attachment Extension Security Exemption Check
Description | This check verifies that the files with the required list of extensions specified in the ars_check.xml file can be downloaded by the installer while performing an installation or upgrade, and the extensions are added in the Supported-Extensions list of the AR System server. You must manually add the required list of extensions in the ars_check.xml file. The ars_check.xml file is bundled with the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility and exists in the config directory. Add the extensions to the
Extension to <param name> parameter
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result | Depending upon the configuration of Attachment Criteria, this check performs the following checks:
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Corrective action | Ensure that any one of the following conditions are true:
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Filter Correction Check
Description | In BMC Remedy AR System 8.1.02, the Ap:Alt-SetPermissions filter was introduced in one of the hotfixes (HF\pinatubo\CertifiedHotFixes\8.1.02\Multitenancy\SW00488367-ApprovalServer\MultiTenancy_Approval_Hotfix_81SP2). The same filter in 9.1.02 is included with an upper case 'P' in the form name: AP:Alt-SetPermissions. When upgrading from 8.1.02 with that hotfix to 9.1.02, you encounter the following error: "ERROR RIKMain - 382 The value(s) for this entry violate a unique index that has been defined for this form" The check validates the casing in the AP:Alt-SetPermissions filter name. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result | When upgrading from 8.1.02 with that hotfix to 9.1.02, the check detects a lower case 'p' in the AP:Alt-SetPermissions filter name and displays the following error message: Please correct the filter name from Ap:Alt-SetPermissions to AP:Alt-SetPermissions. Execute the following SQL statement to fix it:
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Corrective action | Execute the SQL statement provided in the preceding row to update the filter name. |
Dependent Library Check for Linux and Solaris
Description | This check verifies that the following mandatory packages required for running the BMC Remedy AR System server reside on a computer. For Linux
The check also verifies that the libstdc++.so.6 library resides in the \lib or \usr\lib directory for Linux. For Solaris
Notes:
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action |
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Disk Space Check for ZDT
Description | This check verifies the disk space available to take a backup of the installation directory and the FTS directory before you perform the zero-downtime upgrade. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that sufficient free space is available on the disk. The available disk space should be equal to or more than 2.5 times the size of (installation directory + FTS directory). |
FTS Indexes Check
Description | This check investigates whether Lucene indexes used for search operations are corrupted or inconsistent. The read operation fails when the index is corrupted. |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | If the Lucene indexes are corrupted or inconsistent, perform the following actions:
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Incorrect Overlay Field Mapping Check
Description | This check verifies that the form corresponding to a field or view in overlay mode is also in the overlay mode. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | If the field or view is in overlay mode, but the corresponding form is not in overlay mode, you must contact BMC Support to resolve this issue. |
Join Form Validation Check
Description | This check verifies that no join forms with invalid customizations exist in the system, where the primary and secondary forms are different in Base and Overlay. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Delete the overlays of the join forms that contain the invalid customizations. See
Deleting overlay objects
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Network Address Check for Server
Description | This check verifies that the IP address configured for the server (in the hosts file) is a valid physical network address (not a loopback address 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.1.1). Connection issues might occur in a server group environment. If you configure the server address as 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.1.1 in the host file, the other servers in the server group environment cannot communicate with this server. Note: This check is specific to Linux system. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective Action | Configure the IP address to a physical IP address identifiable over the network. |
Next Request ID Block Size Check
Description | This check verifies that the value of Next Request ID Block Size is greater than or equal to 100. For information on the benefits of setting the block-size, see
Allocating blocks of Next-IDs for faster create operations
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective Action | On the Configuration tab of the Server Information page in the AR System Administration Console, set the value of Next Request ID Block Size to 100. |
Object Reservation Check
Description | This check verifies that the BMC Remedy AR System object reservation on the target system is ON or OFF. Object reservation supports team development of applications by enabling one developer to prevent other developers from modifying objects. When developing an application with others, you need to prevent them from overwriting your object changes. To do this, you need to use object reservation. For example, before starting a development task, you can reserve the objects you plan to change. After completing and testing the changes, you can release the objects, so that others can work on them. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Release all reserved objects. From the AR System Server Administration Console, set object reservation to OFF. See
Using object reservation
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OS Compatibility Check
Description | This check validates whether the system on which you are installing is a supported operating system. It checks for OS compatibility according to the OS Supportability Matrix document. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result | The check gets the current version of the OS on which the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility runs and compares it with the minimum supported values. The following list shows minimum supported versions of the supported operating systems:
Depending on the OS type, this check performs the following checks:
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Corrective action | Ensure that the version of the operating system of the computer on which BMC Remedy AR System is installed is the same or later than the minimum supported version.
BMC Solution And Product Availability And Compatibility Utility (SPAC)
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Read-Only-Tran Check
Description | This check verifies that the |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that the Read-Only-Tran-Off parameter is configured in the Centralized Configuration and the value is set to T (True). |
RPC Check
Description | (Solaris only) This check verifies that the |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that the RPC-Non-Blocking-IO parameter in the Centralized Configuration is set to F (False). |
Secondary Server Down Check
Description | This validation ensures that the secondary AR System server or servers are not running while the primary AR System server is being upgraded. The installer automatically brings the secondary AR System server(s) down while the primary AR Server is being upgraded. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
Note: If you are running the upgrade in Zero downtime (ZDT) mode, you can ignore this check. |
Corrective action | The installer automatically brings the secondary AR System server(s) down while the primary AR Server is being upgraded. |
System Information Check
Description | This check validates the configuration of the system on which BMC Remedy AR System is installed. |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result | This check displays the following information:
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Corrective action | Because this check provides information message, no corrective action is required. |
Corrupted Placeholder Schema Check
Description | This check verifies that no database table exists for a placeholder form. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Delete the database tables corresponding to the placeholder forms listed in the error message. |
DB Configuration Check
Description | This check validates the following attributes of the database server and produces a report of the actual and recommended values: (For MS SQL)
(Oracle) Note: In order to check the actual value of parameter, the AR DB user requires access of Oracle DB system objects. Use the following query to grant access to the AR DB user:
(AR DB Machine)
Note: In some cases, a failure of upgrade is observed if the parameters are not set as per the recommendations. | ||||||||||||||||
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Type | Pre-upgrade check | ||||||||||||||||
Check performed and expected result | If any of the sizing parameters are less than or different from their recommended setting, the check fails. Depending on the parameters that fail, either an error or a warning is displayed. You can compare the actual value with the recommended value in the report that is displayed. | ||||||||||||||||
Corrective action | Perform the following corrective steps:
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Database Compatibility Check
Description | This check validates the database compatibility with the lowest supported database version. The following databases are supported:
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective Action | Upgrade the database to the supported version. See Compatibility matrix. |
Database Transactional Space Availability Check
Description | This check verifies that the available transactional space that is configured for the AR Server Database is smaller than the available transactional space specified as an input parameter to the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that the available transactional space that is configured for the AR Server Database is not smaller than the available transactional space specified as an input parameter. You can specify the value of available transactional space as an input to the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility in the ars_check.xml file. The ars_check.xml file is bundled with the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility, and exists in the config directory. Note: This check verifies that the available transactional space is larger than the recommended minimum. |
DB-OS Unicode Lang Check
Description | This check verifies that the BMC Remedy AR System and database character sets match. If the character sets do not match, when you install any Unicode languages, the installer may import language-specific definition files, but the Mid Tier may not be able to display them properly. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
For example, if the database character set is Unicode, the AR System locale must be set to include the UTF character set. A DBA can run the following query for validation:
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Corrective action | Set the BMC Remedy AR System locale to include a character set that matches the database character set. See
Setting the Locale tab
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GetList Max Entries Check
Description | This check verifies that the value of Max Entries returned by GetList exceeds 2000. The Max Entries returned by GetList parameter sets the maximum number of requests that a search can return. BMC recommends always setting this parameter because unqualified searches can yield enormous result sets. This leads to a large amount of memory allocated to each BMC Remedy AR System server thread that processes this type of search. Additionally, queries will take longer to execute and use more database resources. |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
Note: Starting in 9.1 SP2, the default value for Max-Entries-Per-Query is 2000. So, if this setting is missing from ar.cfg and Centralized Configuration, the value of 2000 is used. |
Corrective action | On the Configuration tab of the Server Information page in the AR System Administration Console, set the value of Max Entries returned by GetList to 2000. |
Meta-data Unique Values Check
Description | This check verifies that the metadata tables have unique key-value combinations prior to applying unique indexes in the upgrade. The check also considers overlays created over forms. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result | This check provides a list of all metadata tables and indexes that contain nonunique values. |
Corrective action | If nonunique key values are found in the listed metadata tables, eliminate all duplicate records and retain only one. Perform the following corrective actions:
Example — Database query for table actlink_mapping
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SQL Replication ON Check
Description | This check validates that SQL replication is OFF for any of the tables. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result | If the SQL replication is ON for any of the tables, the check lists the names of all such tables. |
Corrective action | Ensure that SQL replication is OFF for all tables. Note: Replication can cause issues when importing definitions and altering DB views. So, replication cannot be enabled during the upgrade. |
CarteHeapSizeCheck
Description | This check verifies that the Carte heap size in Centralized Configuration is set to a minimum value of 1024 MB. If this is not done, you might face an out of memory error. In this case, the Carte server might not come up. |
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Type | Configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
You need to check the following entries from the server:
(Microsoft Windows) armonitor.cfg
(Linux) armonitor.conf
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Corrective action | Ensure that the Carte heap size parameter is specified in the armonitor.cfg file or the armonitor.conf file and is set to a minimum value of 1024 MB. |
Collection Directory Space Availability Check for FTS Check
Description | This check verifies that the free space available in the FTS index collection directory is more than twice its current size. For example, if the current size of the FTS index collection directory is 1GB, at least 2GB of free space must be available in the directory. During upgrade, the usage of the FTS index collection directory might double and upgrade might fail if enough free space is not available. The default location of the FTS index collection directory is <AR_INSTALL_DIR>/ftsconfiguration/collection, where <AR_INSTALL_DIR> is the directory where BMC Remedy AR System is installed. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that sufficient free space is available on the disk where the FTS index collection directory is located. |
AR Config Params Check
Description | This check verifies that the ar.cfg or ar.conf parameters for AR Server are specified according to the recommended values. Note: The recommended values are the default values. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action |
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AR Configuration JAVA Parameters Check
Description | This check is run only if you are at BMC Remedy AR System server 9.0 or later. This check verifies that the JVM options set in the AR Server Config file are according to the following recommended values. If the parameter exists and is according to the recommendation, the HTML report does not notify the parameter. The following values are specified for a medium-size environment.
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action |
For more details on Java heap dumps (and thread dumps) for AR Server, see
https://bmcsites.force.com/casemgmt/sc_KnowledgeArticle?sfdcid=000101754
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AR Machine Parameter Check
Description | This check verifies that the BMC Remedy AR Server adheres to the recommended values for the following parameters:
Note: The preceding parameters are applicable per server. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Use the minimum recommended hardware as suggested. BMC recommends that you must retain the free disk space until the upgrade is complete. |
Repeat Parameter Check
Description | This check verifies that no duplicate configuration parameters exist in the ar.cfg (ar.conf) file. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Remove duplicate configuration parameters, if any, in the Centralized Configuration. |
Java Version Check
Description | This check validates the version of Java on the machine on which you run the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility. This is one of the system-requirements. For details, see System requirements. |
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Type | Pre-upgrade check, configuration check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that Java 8 update 45 or later is installed on the machine on which you are running the BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility. |
Platform (AR System) Version Check
Description | This check verifies that the current version of the AR System server is supported by the installer for upgrade. Note:
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Type | Pre-upgrade check |
Check performed and expected result |
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Corrective action | Ensure that the version of the current AR System server is not earlier than the minimum version supported by the installer. |
Related topics
BMC Remedy ITSM Process Designer checks
BMC Service Level Management checks
BMC Service Request Management checks
Unified Data Management (UDM) checks
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