Planning an upgrade
Before you start an upgrade, review this planning guide to select the appropriate upgrade method and to understand the upgrade process.
Choosing an upgrade path
Your current version of the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite platform components and applications determines the upgrade path that you choose. Review the planning decisions and related information in the table to plan your upgrade path.
Planning decision | Details |
|---|---|
| From which versions can I upgrade? | You can upgrade directly to BMC Remedy ITSM Suite 18.05 from BMC Remedy ITSM 7.6.04 or a later version.
|
| How do I upgrade from a version earlier than 7.6.04? | If you are upgrading from a version earlier than BMC Remedy ITSM 7.6.04, you must first upgrade to BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.02. For instructions, see
Upgrading
Best practice BMC recommends that you sign up for the AMIGO program to discuss options for upgrading from a version earlier than 7.6.04. For more information, see Upgrade planning assistance. |
| What is the difference between upgrading from a version earlier than 7.6.04 and from version 7.6.04 or later? | In BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04, the overlays feature was introduced to preserve application customizations during the upgrade process. During the upgrade, the upgrade installers ignore application overlays and change only the objects that were originally installed with the application or server. After the upgrade, the application or server continues to use the overlays instead of the origin objects for run-time operations so that your customizations are preserved. If you are upgrading from a release that was customized without overlays, you will need to create overlays for those existing application customizations before you upgrade. This process is part of the 8.1.02 upgrade. For details about the process, see
Creating overlays
Learn more about overlays Recommended webinar: Connect with Remedy - Overlays and Customizations |
| How do I upgrade from version 7.6.04 or later? | The Best Practice Customization mode of BMC Remedy Developer Studio ensures that all application object customizations are saved as overlays when you upgrade. If you have already created overlays, you can directly upgrade each component to the latest version. In BMC Remedy AR system version 8.1, granular overlays were introduced to minimize the amount of reconciliation you need to perform following an upgrade or patch. Granular overlays allow you to modify only some aspects of an object and inherit other aspects from the origin object. When you upgrade to 9.1, you might need to adjust your overlays prior to installing BMC Remedy ITSM and reconciling. For details, see Adjusting customizations when upgrading. Learn more about granular overlays Recommended video:
Granular overlays
Recommended Communities blog: Trending in Support: Using granular overlays to manage customizations |
| What is the BMC Remedy ITSM CI Attribute change, and why do I need to make these changes when I upgrade? | Earlier versions of BMC Remedy ITSM extended the BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data model by adding a number of ITSM-specific attributes to CI classes. Starting in BMC Remedy ITSM version 8.0, these attributes are now stored in the ITSM Foundation instead of the BMC Atrium CMDB. During the upgrade, the installer will copy the ITSM attributes from the CMDB to the ITSM Foundation and will put a workflow in place to keep the attributes up to date in both locations. For more information, see Performing the BMC Remedy ITSM upgrade. Learn more about the ITSM CI Attribute change |
Determining the upgrade scope
Depending on your business needs, you can incrementally upgrade your Remedy system. Review the planning decisions and related information in the table to plan the upgrade scope and decide whether to deploy new components.
Planning decision | Details |
|---|---|
| Which versions of the platform and applications are supported together? | You must review the compatible BMC product versions in the compatibility matrix to understand which supported versions of the BMC Remedy ITSM applications are supported with the platform components. The Remedy platform offers backward compatibility with older versions of Remedy applications. This allows you to upgrade the platform without having to upgrade your applications. Customers with BMC Remedy AR platform as their core stack and custom applications running on top of the platform can just upgrade the platform. Important You must ensure that all the application components are at the same version. For example, if you upgrade BMC Remedy ITSM to 9.1 with Process Designer version 9.1, it is necessary to upgrade BMC Service Request Management to version 9.1. You should also keep BMC Remedy Mid Tier, AR Server and Smart Reporting on the same version. For BMC Remedy with Smart IT, see the
System requirements for Smart IT
For BMC Digital Workplace, see
Compatibility matrix
|
Can I upgrade just the platform components? | Yes. You can upgrade the platform components (BMC Remedy AR System and BMC Atrium Core) separately from any applications on the system. You must upgrade the AR System server and the Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) together, and they must be at the same version. You can perform an in-place upgrade the platform components with zero downtime if they are deployed in a server group environment. BMC Remedy Mid Tier must be upgraded to 1805 at the same time or before upgrading the AR System server and the Atrium Core CMDB. AR System Server 1805 introduces new dynamic data menus that do not work if a lower version of Mid Tier is used against AR System Server 1805. |
| Can I upgrade just the applications? | No. You must upgrade the platform before you can upgrade the applications. The applications must be at the same version as the platform (or the platform can be at a later version than the applications). However, you can upgrade the applications during a different upgrade period. For example, you might upgrade the platform one month or one week prior to the applications. |
| What BMC integrations do I need to upgrade? | Review the compatibility matrix to check whether the version of your BMC integrations are supported with this version of the Remedy platform. Not all BMC products are listed in the compatibility matrix. In this case, check the system requirements or documentation for the integration, such as the following products: |
| When should I upgrade BMC Remedy with Smart IT or BMC Digital Workplace? | The upgrade process is separate for BMC Remedy with Smart IT or BMC Digital Workplace. The upgrade can be performed during the same period as the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite upgrade or at a later date. If you are using BMC Digital Workplace and/or BMC Remedy with Smart IT, it is recommended that you upgrade:
Note that if ITSM is upgraded to version 18.05, Smart IT must also be upgraded to 18.05, because Smart IT 2.0 and earlier will not work with ITSM 18.05. The upgrade sequence is as follows:
For more information, see
Upgrading BMC Digital Workplace
|
Do I need to migrate to BMC Remedy Single Sign-On from BMC Atrium Single Sign-On? | BMC Atrium Single Sign-On is not supported for BMC Remedy Action Request System 9.1.00 and later versions. BMC supports only BMC Remedy Single Sign-On with BMC Remedy Action Request System 9.1.00 and later versions. If you have already migrated to BMC Remedy Single Sign-On, you can upgrade to the current version, which is separate from the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite upgrade. For information about how to install or upgrade, see the documentation for
Remedy Single Sign-On 9.1
|
Choosing the upgrade method
There are two methods for upgrading the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite: staged upgrade or in-place upgrade. Depending on the complexity of your environment and your outage window, choose a method that suites your requirements. Review the planning decisions and related information in the table to select an upgrade method.
Planning decision | Details |
|---|---|
What is an in-place upgrade? | An in-place upgrade encompasses the following:
|
What is a staged upgrade? | A staged upgrade encompasses the following:
|
| Do I need to schedule downtime for the upgrade? |
|
Where are the steps involved in an upgrade? | BMC recommends that you follow the steps in one of these processes to perform the upgrade: |
| What data can be migrated with the Delta Data Migration tool? | |
How do I set up a staging environment? | For details, see Setting up systems for a staged upgrade |
Planning the upgrade environment
When you upgrade to a new version, you might need to provision for newer hardware to support your deployment and update third-party software. Review the planning decisions and related information to plan the upgraded environment.
| Planning decision | Details |
|---|---|
| What are the hardware requirements? | Important You must review the recommended Hardware requirements for your deployment to determine whether you need to upgrade the hardware, both primary servers and secondary servers in a server group. Also review the following sections in the documentation: |
| What is the recommended sizing guideline? | BMC publishes guidelines for hardware sizing based on a series of enterprise-scale tests to demonstrate the scalability and performance of the platform and the applications. Best practice BMC recommends that you adequately estimate and size your environment for continued scalability and performance. The medium-size deployment model specified in the hardware requirements is suited for the majority of our customers. If you need additional capacity, BMC recommends that you add an additional medium-size server to a server group. The product installers automatically run the preupgrade checks and configuration checks based on BMC's medium size best-practice sizing recommendations. |
| Will I need additional hardware? | If you decide to perform a staged upgrade, you will need additional hardware for the development, QA, and production staging servers. To understand staging server implementation, see Setting up a staged upgrade server. |
| What are the software requirements? | Important You must review the compatibility matrix to ensure the current systems contain the supported third-party software, supported databases, and supported operating systems. Also review the following sections in the documentation:
For network port requirements, see |
| Which databases are supported? | For database support, see the database requirements in the compatibility matrix and in the Hardware requirements. Also review Unicode support. |
Planning pre-upgrade activities
Review the planning decisions and related information to plan your pre-upgrade activities.
Planning decision | Details |
|---|---|
| What preparations do I need to make before I begin? | The Preparing section describes general preparation tasks, such as downloading the installation files. For each component, there are also pre-upgrade steps that you need to follow. |
| Where should I document my installation details? | Before you start installing or upgrading products, you might want to first gather your responses to the installer prompts for each product in the installation spreadsheet. The installation spreadsheet provides guidance on what needs to be entered for an upgrade and helps you collect these parameter values to reduce errors during the upgrade process. For more information, see Completing the installation spreadsheet. |
What should I test during the upgrade? | See Performing upgrade testing. Best practice To minimize testing in the final phase of upgrade, BMC recommends that perform extensive testing in your QA environment. To do so requires the QA environment to closely match the capabilities and the load on the current production environment. |
| Are there any tools that I will need to perform the upgrade? | Yes. For details, see Installing upgrade utilities. |
Where can I find information about issues I need to be aware of? | For the latest patch information or bulletins, see Release notes and notices. For details about known issues in this release, see: |
Upgrade planning assistance
The following resources are available to help you plan your upgrade.
AMIGO program
The BMC Assisted MIGration Offering (AMIGO) program is designed to assist customers with the planning of product upgrades to a newer version (“Success through proper planning"). This program is offered to BMC customers currently subscribed to BMC Support.
BMC will provide collateral containing upgrade best practices compiled by experts in BMC Support and in R&D. You can leverage this information to create your upgrade plan. Upgrade experts in BMC Support will review your plan and offer advice to help ensure your success.
For more information on Amigo program, watch the following video:
To learn more about the AMIGO program, visit the
AMIGO Program Overview
on the Support page.
Read about the AMIGO program at https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-28417.
Sample upgrade project plans
To help you get started with the planning process, the attached Microsoft Project 2013 plans provide sample upgrade tasks based on the in-place or staged upgrade methods.
| Microsoft Project .mpp file | Adobe Acrobat .pdf file | |
|---|---|---|
| In-place upgrade | Sample In-place ITSM Suite 91 Upgrade Plan.mpp | Sample In-place ITSM Suite 91 Upgrade Plan.pdf |
| Staged upgrade | Sample Staged ITSM Suite 91 Upgrade Plan.mpp | Sample Staged ITSM Suite 91 Upgrade Plan.pdf |
Upgrade webinar
Watch the Remedy 9 Upgrade Best Practices video about upgrade best practices and some of the major architectural changes that will help you understand the upgrade process.
Frequently asked questions about upgrading
Review the webinar FAQ for additional details and clarifications about upgrade compatibility: https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-4118
Where to go from here
| Next step | After you have selected the upgrade method, created a plan, and acquired any necessary hardware, perform the tasks in Preparing. |
|---|
Comments
We would like to upgrade ITSM 9.1.3 with DWP 18.02 and SmartIT 2.0 in place to ITSM + DWP + SmartIT 18.05
You write that the upgrade sequence is as follows: 1. Upgrade to BMC Digital Workplace 2 .Upgrade to Remedy ITSM Suite 3. Upgrade to Remedy with Smart IT
But at the same time, we know that after upgrading DWP from 18.02 to 18.05 SmartIT (2.0) will not work anymore, since after installing DWP 18.05 the "ux" application is redirected to "dwp", and MongoDB is not used anymore. That means we cannot take advantage of the zero-downtime installation of Remedy platform and we have to plan a long downtime from DWP upgrade until Smart IT upgrade.
Am I correct? If not, could you please explain if there is a way to split such a long upgrade path in some steps in order to have a working environment in between?
Thanks
Hello Daniele,
After upgrading DWP to 18.05, Smart IT 2.0 will continue to work because the “ux” proxy application is smart enough to redirect requests correctly to old Smart IT application if it wasn’t upgraded. So, you can upgrade only DWP first without upgrading ITSM and Smart IT.
You can schedule upgrade of ITSM and Smart IT later. Note that if ITSM is upgraded to version 18.05, Smart IT also must be upgraded to 18.05, because Smart IT 2.0 and earlier will not work with ITSM 18.05.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ashwini
Hi Ashwini, thanks for your reply.
I've still my doubts that this is possible. After DWP upgrade Tomcat will run a new connector on port 9001 replacing the old "social service". SmartIT 2.0 still needs the old social service, which of course cannot run on the same port 9001. Maybe it's possible to separate the two social services running on two different ports and pointing DWP and SmartIT to the 2 different social services, but I didn't find any BMC documentation regarding this, and I'm quite sure that without changing those ports there is no way to have SmartIT running...
Regards, Daniele
Do you have any idea when the new version of Remedy (1811) is planned to be released?
Hello Ahmed,
There is no Remedy 18.11 release. A new version of Remedy 19.02 is expected to be released soon.
Regards,
Ashwini
Hi Ashwini, Are you essentially saying that if the current version of MyIT is 3.2 and its upgraded to 18.05. will it still work with ITSM 9.1.04 (pre 18.05 versions)?
Regards, Guru
Hello Guru,
Yes; DWP 18.05 will work with ITSM 9.1.04.
Regards,
Ashwini
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