FAQ

Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions about BMC Helix IT Service Management containers.

Will database dumps with application sample data be provided?

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

Is the container and Kubernetes orchestration based on-premises deployment of BMC Helix IT Service Management supported on Windows?

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.

Does the database tier in the BMC Helix IT Service management deployment runs in a container?

No. The database is a standalone architecture.

What are the formats or standards used by the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service mangement applications containers?

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

Is BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting also containerized?

Yes.

For more information, see Downloading the installation files.

Are AR System, BMC Helix Innovation Studio, and BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog all merged into one instance, so that only 1 instead of 3 platform installations are necessary and all applications run on this one platform instance?

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

For more information, see Downloading the installation files.

After one deployment, can BMC Deployment Engine be reused for the next deployment?

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.

Is it enough to set up a single Deployment engine, which will be applicable to both non production and production deployment?

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.

Should the deployment engine be kept after the initial deployment is done? Will it be used for further upgrade of Helix Innovation Suite?

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.

Is it mandatory that BMC Helix Innovation Suite, BMC Helix Platform, BMC Helix Logging must be bundled together? For example, is it possible to setup a single BMC Helix Platform or BMC Helix Logging to support multiple BMC Helix Innovation Suite?

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.

Can we separately restart the AR Server, Mid-Tier and other components?

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.

How to form a server group for ITSM?

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

How to identify the individual components installed in different worker nodes?

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
```

How to rank the operations within ITSM?

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.

Is there an option to shutdown and start the entire ITSM application?

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

Can we scale up and scale down the application pods and nodes based on the utilization?

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

What components are covered during 21.3.x ITSM Upgrade?

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 ITSM: Smart Reporting for these BMC Helix Innovation Suite components
Important

You can install BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting if you have opted for Smart Reporting extended support. When you perform fresh installation of BMC Helix IT Service Management 21.3.06 and select to deploy Smart Reporting , the 21.05.03 version of Smart Reporting is installed in your environment.
Smart Reporting version 21.3 is available only for upgrade scenarios for existing customers. This version is not available to new customers.

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.

Is BMC changing the APIs in 21.3.x version?

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.

Will my customized OOTB reports in Smart Reporting be available and working after an upgrade?

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.

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