Sizing and scalability considerations
The sizing baselines specified in this topic are based on the performance lab benchmark test results performed in BMC’s test labs. You may use these baselines for your on-premises BMC Helix IT Service Management deployment. BMC’s performance testing is based on four different system usage profiles: Compact, Small, Medium, and Large.
Small, medium, and large categories are suitable for production deployments and are based on the number of concurrent users.
Compact is a special category intended for a non-production environment. Compact is the smallest functional deployment of BMC Helix Innovation Suite system. Compact systems are suitable for POC, development, and QA environments where resilience and system performance under load is not a consideration.
Concurrent users indicate the combined number of users that are logged in and actively working on a system across each of the following BMC Helix IT Service Management applications that are hosted on a single deployment of BMC Helix IT Service Management:
- BMC Helix ITSM
- BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT
- BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting
- BMC Digital Workplace
- BMC Digital Workplace Catalog
- BMC Helix Business Workflows
- BMC Live Chat
- BMC Helix Dashboards
For real-world deployments, concurrent users might not be the only factor that drives the categorization of a system in the small, medium, or large category.
For example, if you have a high number of integrations that create a high number of system transactions, you must increase your sizing to accommodate the additional load from integrations.
| Category | Concurrent Users | Maximum Concurrent Users Per Application* | Definition | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Smart IT | BMC Digital Workplace | |||
| Compact | NA | NA | NA | Minimum functional deployment. Suitable for POC, development, and QA environments. |
| Small | 700 | 150 | 100 | Suitable for production systems where overall load does not exceed the number of concurrent users. |
| Medium | 2000 | 550 | 225 | |
| Large | 4000 | 1100 | 450 | |
Important
*Maximum Concurrent Users Per Application: Smart IT and BMC Digital Workplace are resource-intensive applications.
If the number of concurrent users for these applications exceeds the stated maximum, use the higher appropriate sizing. For example, if you have a total number of 600 concurrent users, use Small sizing. However, if you have 200 concurrent Smart IT users, use Medium sizing.
If your usage exceeds the maximum numbers for Large sizing, contact
BMC Support
for guidance on how to size your infrastructure.
Other applications on the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform do not have these restrictions if the total number of concurrent users does not exceed the stated maximum values.
Kubernetes infrastructure sizing requirements
Compute requirements are the combined requirements of CPU, RAM, and Persistent Volume Disk requirements without database requirements for the Kubernetes worker nodes.
These compute requirements are shared between all the worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster. The worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster must have CPU and RAM that matches or exceeds the total infrastructure sizing requirement plus the per worker node logging requirement. This is required to support the concurrent user load for a service management application.
The following infrastructure sizing requirement supports the following applications:
- BMC Helix ITSM
- BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT
- BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting
- BMC Digital Workplace
- BMC Digital Workplace Catalog
- BMC Helix Business Workflows
- BMC Live Chat
- BMC Helix Dashboards
The following table shows the compute requirements for Kubernetes deployments of the containerized BMC Helix IT Service Management 21.3 version:
| Category | CPU (core) | RAM (GB) |
|---|---|---|
Compact | 124 | 213 |
Small | 231 | 411 |
Medium | 265 | 591 |
| Large | 422 | 759 |
Important
These requirements do not include BMC Helix ITSM Insights, also known as AI Service Management. If you want to deploy BMC Helix ITSM Insights, add the additional Compute Footprint described in the BMC Helix ITSM Insights resource requirements section.
Per worker node logging
BMC Helix IT Service Management includes Kubernetes
DaemonSet
that runs on each worker node in your Kubernetes Cluster. Combine the overall sizing requirements with the following per worker node requirement to calculate the total infrastructure requirements:
CPU per worker node | RAM per worker node |
|---|---|
3.1 | 8.15 |
For example, for a Compact deployment, calculate the overall compute footprint based on the number of worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster as follows:
| Compact deployment on | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|
| 5 worker nodes | 124 + (5 x 3.1) = 139.5 | 213 + (5 X 8.15) = 253.75 |
| 3 Worker Nodes | 124 + (3 x 3.1) = 133.3 | 213 + (3 X 8.15) = 237.45 |
Resource requests and limits
The following table shows the resource requests and limits. For more information, see
Kubernetes best practices: Resource requests and limits
in Kubernetes documentation.
| Category | CPU (request core) | CPU (limit core) | RAM (request GB) | RAM (limit GB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compact | 20 | 124 | 107 | 213 |
| Small | 32 | 230 | 235 | 411 |
| Medium | 38 | 264 | 348 | 591 |
| Large | 61 | 421 | 427 | 759 |
Namespace resource requirements
The following table shows the resource requirements per namespace:
| Namespace | BMC Helix IT Service Management | BMC Helix common services | BMC Helix Logging | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Compact | Small | Medium | Large | Compact | Small | Medium | Large | Compact | Small | Medium | Large |
| CPU (core) | 35 | 118 | 140 | 199 | 81 | 103 | 114 | 211 | 8 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| RAM (GB) | 62 | 214 | 361 | 446 | 137 | 181 | 211 | 293 | 14 | 16 | 19 | 20 |
Important
The resource requirements per namespace does not include the resources required for BMC Helix ITSM Insights deployment.
Database resource requirements
The following table shows the BMC Helix Innovation Suite database resource requirements:
| Database | PostgreSQL | Oracle | Microsoft SQL Sever | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Compact | Small | Medium | Large | Compact | Small | Medium | Large | Compact | Small | Medium | Large |
| CPU (core) | 8 | 10 | 20 | 56 | 8 | 10 | 20 | 56 | 8 | 10 | 20 | 56 |
| RAM (GB) | 16 | 20 | 40 | 80 | 16 | 20 | 40 | 80 | 16 | 20 | 40 | 80 |
BMC Helix ITSM Insights resource requirements
BMC Helix ITSM Insights
provides native AI Service Management capabilities with the BMC Helix Platform. BMC Helix ITSM Insights uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) and AI clustering algorithms to deliver use cases such as proactive problem management and real-time incident correlation.
BMC Helix ITSM Insights is an optional component for installation and the resource requirements shown below should be added to the overall infrastructure sizing requirements for your BMC Helix IT Service Management deployment. Sizing for BMC Helix ITSM Insights is based on data volumes rather than concurrent users.
Best practice
The following table shows the additional BMC Helix ITSM Insights resource requirements:
| Category | Concurrent users | Incidents per day | CPU (core) | RAM (GB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Compact | 10 | 1000 | 111 | 237 |
Small | 25 | 5000 | 132 | 315 |
Medium | 50 | 10000 | 158 | 409 |
Large | 100 | 15000 | 285 | 756 |
The following table shows the combined infrastructure requirements for BMC Helix Innovation Suite and BMC Helix ITSM Insights:
Category | CPU (core) | RAM (GB) |
|---|---|---|
Compact | 234 | 450 |
Small | 362 | 726 |
Medium | 422 | 1000 |
Large | 706 | 1515 |
Per worker node logging
Combine the overall sizing requirements with the following per worker node requirement to calculate the total infrastructure requirements:
CPU per worker node | RAM per worker node |
|---|---|
3.1 | 8.15 |
For example, for a Compact deployment, calculate the overall compute footprint based on the number of worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster as follows:
| Compact deployment on | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|
| 5 worker nodes | 234 + (5 x 3.1) = 249.5 | 450 + (5 X 8.15) = 490.75 |
| 3 Worker Nodes | 234 + (3 x 3.1) = 243.3 | 450 + (3 X 8.15) = 474.45 |
CPU requirements
The CPU requirements are as follows:
- CPU size must be minimum 2.4 Gz.
BMC expects future releases of BMC Helix IT Service Management deployment will require CPUs that support Tensorflow 2.x.
Most modern chipsets support this capability. For more information, see Hardware requirements
in TensorFlow documentation.
Worker node minimum requirements
Each node in the Kubernetes cluster must have the following minimum configurations:
| Specification | Worker node |
|---|---|
CPU | 16 |
Memory | 32 GB |
For high availability deployments such as production environments, Kubernetes recommends three control nodes.
Best practice
We recommend that you review the vendor documentation for sizing of control nodes. BMC does not have any specific requirements for the sizing of control nodes in a Kubernetes cluster.
For information about recommendations for canonical Kubernetes control nodes, see
Size of master and master components
in Kubernetes documentation.
Worker and master node disk requirements
Kubernetes master and worker nodes require the following free disk space allocation for container images:
Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
Worker and master nodes system disk | 150 GB each |
Persistent volume disk requirements
High performance of Kubernetes Persistent Volume Disk is essential for the overall system performance. Persistent Volume Disk requires block storage. BMC supports a Bring-Your-Own-Storage model for Kubernetes Persistent Volumes. BMC lab testing uses Ceph storage.
The following table shows the disk requirements:
| Category | PVC (TB) |
|---|---|
| Compact | 1.7 |
| Small | 1.7 |
| Medium | 1.7 |
| Large | 1.7 |
We recommend that you use solid-state drive (SSD) with the following specifications:
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
Write latency | 1 ms |
Read latency | 1 ms |
| Write Throughput | 30 MBPS |
| Read Throughput | 80 MBPS |
| IOPS Write | 20 K |
| IOPS Read | 7 K |
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