We provide data dump required for install, but not for sample data.

BMC Helix IT Service Management containers use Linux operating system. The container host systems must have Linux operating system as the kernel is shared between the host and container.

It is theoretically possible to run a Linux virtual machine on a Windows host and deploy Kubernetes across the virtual machine and run Linux containers. However, BMC does not recommend such deployment architecture and does not provide deployment sizing guidelines for such configurations.

BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service management application containers are based on Docker and they leverage Kubernetes orchestration layer.

Yes.

For more information, see Downloading the installation files.

That is correct ! we are bringing all Service Management applications on one converged platform.

For more information, see Downloading the installation files.

Yes, The same Deployment Engine setup ( Jenkins) can be used to deploy different environments of the same version, such as dev, QA, and production.

For more information, see Setting up the deployment input configuration file.

Yes, The same Deployment Engine setup ( Jenkins) may be used to deploy multiple instances of the same version.

For more information, see Setting up the deployment input configuration file.

Yes, The same Deployment Engine setup ( Jenkins) can be used to deploy patches and updates; hence may be retained or recreated when needed.

For more information, see Setting up the deployment input configuration file.

Yes, Multiple BMC Helix ITSM and Helix Platform namespaces can use same Helix Logging Namespace. Only one helix logging namespace is recommended per cluster.

For more information, see Setting up the installation environment.

AR server, FTS server (Platform Rank server), mid-tier, and so on are all separate services.

To trigger rolling restart, you must change the value of the triggerUpgrade variable to any value of your choice that triggers restart. This variable is exposed in the values.yaml file and is referred in various specs, such as statefulset or deployment.

All containers are part of the same server group. You don’t have to anything specific to make them part of the server group.

You can know which pod is running in the namespace by using one of the following ways:

• If you are consuming the Prometheus metrics from Kubernetes, you can scrape the metrics to know which pod is running in the namespace.

• You can run the following command that will list the pods you have and the worker nodes that are running.
  

  kubectl get pods -oy

The ranking is governed through AR system operations ranking. On startup, container bootstrap script only assigns default ranking for the first time pod comes up. From that point on, the ranking changes are retained.

If you scale down all the pods to zero, the ITSM application will stop.

Auto scaling is not supported currently for both pods and nodes. 

The 21.3.x ITSM upgrade includes the latest patches for the following components:  

• BMC Helix ITSM 
• BMC Service Level Management 
• BMC Service Request Management 
• Mid-Tier (AR System) 
• BMC CMDB 

• BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting 
• BMC Helix Digital Workplace Basic 
• BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced 
• BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog 
• BMC Live Chat 

• BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT 

If you are using BMC Helix Innovation Suite or applications based on it, then the upgrade also includes: 

• BMC Helix Innovation Studio 
• BMC Helix Business Workflows  
• BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker 
• BMC Helix Virtual Agent/Chatbot 
  
  
• BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting for these BMC Helix Innovation Suite components

Single applications or modules are not upgraded separately during the upgrade. As part of the 21.3.x upgrade, all components are moved to a single instance of BMC Helix ITSM Suite 21.3.

BMC has not made any changes to the existing APIs. Any code that you have built on previously existing APIs should continue to work in the new release.  

There are minor authentication related changes to the APIs. For more information on the authentication related changes, see the following links:

https://docs.bmc.com/docs/display/ars213/Overview+of+the+REST+API

https://docs.bmc.com/docs/display/ars213/Access+and+authentication+for+the+REST+API

We have added some new, simplified REST APIs for specific ITSM objects, such as incidents, problems, change requests in versions 21.3.x.

See, https://docs.bmc.com/docs/itsm213/overview-of-the-simplified-rest-api-1030563651.html.

Yes. We recommend not changing the OOTB (out-of-the-box) reports provided in BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting. Always make a copy of the OOTB reports and then make the necessary changes. If you followed this approach, your reports would continue to work. If you modified the OOTB reports, they would not work post upgrade. Please make sure you create copies of all modified OOTB report before the upgrade starts.