System requirements

Before you deploy the product, make sure that your environment meets the hardware and software requirements.

System requirements

Make sure that your environment meets the following requirements:

Orchestration platforms

Kubernetes 1.18 – 1.24

OpenShift 4.6 – 4.11

Important: If you are installing BMC Helix IT Service Management and BMC Helix IT Operations Management in a Kubernetes cluster, follow the Kubernetes version guidelines in System requirements Open link BMC Helix IT Operations Management documentation.

Best practice: We recommend you to use the latest certified version of Kubernetes when setting up the cluster for first time installation of BMC Helix IT Service Management.

Supported Kubernetes Platforms

The following Kubernetes and OpenShift based platforms are supported with the underlying Kubernetes or OpenShift versions as listed in the previous row.

Kubernetes management tools
- VMware Tanzu
- Rancher Kubernetes
- Nutanix Karbon
OKD (Community Edition OpenShift)
- Due to a lack of vendor support, BMC recommends that you do not use OKD for enterprise production usage.
  Refer to additional system requirements for OpenShift in Preparing to install in an OpenShift cluster.
Public Cloud Managed Kubernetes
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE)
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Important: Kubernetes clusters that use only the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) are supported.

Java Java 11 and later for AR System clients, such as Developer Studio, and AI.

Docker Install the Docker client on the machine on which you plan to install BMC Helix Platform services.

Package Manager

Helm 3.x
Use the appropriate Helm 3.x version for your Kubernetes version as per the Helm Version Support Policy Open link .

Ingress

nginx-ingress-controller	1.2.0, 1.5.1
server-name-hash-bucket-size	1024
ssl-redirect	false

See the compatibility matrix for BMC Helix IT Service Management and BMC Helix Platform services deployment.

The default namespace of ingress controller is ingress-nginx.

Review the following parameter value requirements in the nginx-configuration configmap in the ingress-nginx namespace:

enable-underscores-in-headers: "true"
proxy-body-size: 250m
server-name-hash-bucket-size: "1024"
ssl-redirect: "false"
use-forwarded-headers: "true"
proxy-connect-timeout: "300"
proxy-read-timeout: "600"
proxy-send-timeout: "600"

You can use the following command to view the parameters in the nginx-configuration configmap:

kubectl describe cm nginx-configuration -n ingress-nginx

Container Host OS

BMC Helix Innovation Suite has no specific dependencies on the underlying Linux OS or release running on your Worker Nodes.

You can use any x86_64 GNU/Linux OS supported by your Kubernetes or OpenShift platform and release version.

Host OS Bash Shell Bash Shell 4.2 or later

Persistent or Elastic Storage

BMC supports a Bring-Your-Own-Storage-Class model, for any block storage supporting high performance IOPS.

CephRBD and NFS are certified by BMC.

Load Balancer

F5 Load Balancer or other Load Balancer.

The following load balancer SSL methods are supported:

SSL Offloading at the load balancer
SSL Passthrough to offload at the Ingress Controller
SSL Full Proxy
Allow X-Forwarded- Headers Upstream of Ingress
Reverse Proxy http back to https

Important: Make sure that you configure the following headers for SSL Offloading at the load balancer:

X-Forwarded-Proto—https
X-Forwarded-Host
X-Forwarded-Port—443

Security Certificates

DigiCert and R3 certificates.

Custom CA signed certificates and self-signed certificates are supported.

Important: If you are using a self-signed or custom CA certificate, make sure that you use the same custom certificate during BMC Helix Platform and BMC Helix IT Service Management installation.

Docker Registry

Direct access to BMC's Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) at https://containers.bmc.com
OR
Local Harbor 1.8 and later synchronized with BMC's Docker Trusted Registry
A docker client is required.

Data Base Support

Oracle Database 19c
Oracle Database 12.2
Oracle Database 12.1

Microsoft SQL Server 2019
Microsoft SQL Server 2017
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 (SP2)

PostgreSQL 13

Notes:

You must set up the database server outside the Kubernetes clusters on a physical or virtual machine.
In general, BMC recommends running on the latest Service Pack, Maintenance Level, or other such update to listed databases.
AR System server and BMC Helix CMDB support 'AlwaysOn' for Microsoft SQL Server.
Remedy AR System and BMC Helix CMDB server support Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) feature of Oracle Database.
Oracle database pluggable and un-pluggable are supported.
PostgreSQL supported configuration includes case sensitive and Unicode implementation.

Email Engine

Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 (64-bit) and Microsoft Office 365 Exchange

Notes:

BMC internally certifies Email Engine with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office 365 Exchange. Because Email Engine makes use of JavaMail API that is capable of working with other SMTP servers, SMTP servers that are not listed in this table might still operate correctly with AR System. You might be able to run AR System in a configuration not listed as supported. However, BMC has not certified the integration of Email Engine with such SMTP servers in their labs.

Microsoft has discontinued MAPI support in Microsoft Exchange Server 2016; Support for EWS (exchange web service) is available for Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 only.
See, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/discontinued-features?view=exchserver-2016.
OAuth 2.0 based authentication is required for Microsoft Office 365 Exchange starting with 20.02.01 and later
Starting with AR System 20.02.01 (also known as 20.02 Patch 1), Email Engine supports OAuth 2.0 based authentication for the Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol to access Microsoft Office 365 Exchange.
For more information, see AR System 20.08 enhancements in the AR System online documentation.

BMC Helix Platform

BMC Helix Platform 23.2.02
BMC Helix Platform 23.1.02 Hotfix 1
BMC Helix Platform 22.4.00 Hotfix 1
BMC Helix Platform 22.2.01

Important: We recommend that you use BMC Helix Platform 23.1.02 Hotfix 1. Do not use the BMC Helix Platform 22.4.00 version.

BMC Helix IT Service Management installation uses the following services provided by BMC Helix Platform:

Infrastructure services
Common services
BMC Helix Dashboards
BMC Helix ITSM Insights

Metrics Server

BMC Helix uses the HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA) for its services so that the product can scale based on the customer usage. For the HPA to function, Kubernetes must expose metrics that are used to trigger scaling activities, for which a Metrics Server is required.

For information about the HPA, see this page in the Kubernetes documentation Open link .

For information about the Metrics Server, see this page in the Kubernetes documentation Open link .

sshpass program

The sshpass utility helps administrators use the 'ssh' connection type with passwords. Install the sshpass program to easily manage SSH connections in scripts.

For more information, see To install sshpass.

The following table shows the compatibility matrix for BMC Helix IT Service Management and BMC Helix Platform services deployment in a shared cluster:

BMC Helix IT Service Management version	BMC Helix Platform services version	Supported technologies
21.3.06	22.2.01	Kubernetes 1.18 – 1.23 OpenShift 4.6 – 4.10 Nginx Ingress Controller 1.2.0 Helm 3.x
	22.4.00 Hotfix 1	Kubernetes 1.19 – 1.24 OpenShift 4.6 – 4.11 Nginx Ingress Controller 1.2.0, 1.5.1 Helm 3.x
	23.1.02 Hotfix 1	Kubernetes 1.20 – 1.24 OpenShift 4.9 – 4.11 Nginx Ingress Controller 1.2.0, 1.5.1 Helm 3.x
	23.2.02	Kubernetes 1.23 – 1.24 OpenShift 4.10 – 4.11 Nginx Ingress Controller 1.6.4, 1.7.0 Important: BMC has certified using the Nginx Ingress Controller version 1.6.4 with Kubernetes version 1.23 and OpenShift 4.10. BMC has certified using the Nginx Ingress Controller version 1.7.0 with Kubernetes versions 1.24 and and OpenShift 4.11 Helm 3.11

Network port requirements

Review the following components and the ports used:

Source component	Destination	Port	Direction
Local image registry (Harbor) with internet access	BMC Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) (containers.bmc.com)	443	Outbound
Kubernetes cluster (Worker nodes)	Local image registry (Harbor) with internet access	443, 80 The default Harbor port is 80 if Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is not enabled.	Outbound
End user traffic	Load balancer or HA proxy	443	Incoming
Load balancer	Ingress controller	Ingress controller service port The port varies based on your Kubernetes platform and Ingress controller service.	Incoming
Kubernetes cluster (Worker nodes)	Database server	Database port The port varies based on your database type and service.	Outbound
AR Clients (Developer Studio)	BMC Helix Innovation Suite server Admin service	46262 You can expose this port through EXTERNAL-IP or Nodeport for the platform-admin-ext service.	Inbound
Kubernetes cluster (Worker nodes)	SMTP server	SMTP server port	Outbound
BMC Deployment Engine	Kubernetes cluster	Kubernetes API server port	Outbound
HDM virtual machine	Staging database server	Database port The port varies based on your database type and service.	Outbound

Jenkins server requirements

Review the following requirements for the Jenkins server:

Component	Node	vCPU	Operating System	RAM (GB)	Disk space (GB)
Jenkins server	1	2	RHEL 7.x and 8.x are certified. CentOS 7.x and CentOS Core 8.x are certified. Equivalent releases of Fedora and Oracle Linux are supported.	Minimum 8	100

For information about setting up BMC Deployment Engine, see Setting up BMC Deployment Engine.

To install sshpass program

Install sshpass, if not already installed by using the following steps:

Verify that sshpass is not already installed in your system. The following command checks if sshpass is available in any of the available repositories.
```
# which sshpass
```
If sshpass is not found on any of the available repositories, the following response is returned:
```
/usr/bin/which: no sshpass in
```
Use the following command to know the possible repositories in which sshpass is available on the system:
```
# yum provides sshpass
```
Install sshpass by using the following command:
```
# yum -y install sshpass
```
Verify that sshpass is installed in your system by using the following command:
```
# which sshpass
```

Harbor repository requirements

Use Harbor latest version. For information about Harbor installation requirements, see Harbor Installation and Configuration Open link in Harbor documentation.

Make sure that your system meets the following requirements to access images from a local Harbor repository:

Requirement

Description

Hardware

Minimum 4 CPU with 8 GB memory and the following disk space:

750 GB disk space when you are setting up the Harbor repository for the first time.
100 GB approximately when you are synchronizing the container images in BMC DTR with the Harbor repository for an upgrade.

Software

Docker Engine version 20.10.7
To install Docker Engine, see Install Docker Engine .
Docker Compose version 1.29.2
To install Docker Compose, see Install Docker Compose .
OpenSSL latest version

Network port

Harbor installation uses the following ports as the default ports:

Port 443 with HTTPS protocol
Port 4443 with HTTPS protocol
Port 80 with HTTP protocol

For information about setting up Harbor repository, see Setting up a Harbor repository.

Browser support

Operating System	Browsers
All supported operating systems and platforms	Firefox Chrome
Windows 7	Firefox Chrome
Windows 8	Firefox Chrome
Windows 10	Firefox Chrome Microsoft Edge HARMAN Packaged Browser
Macintosh OS X 10.5	Safari 6.3.x

Namespaces

Review the following requirements for the namespaces in your cluster:

Namespace to install BMC Helix Platform.
Namespace to install Elasticsearch-Fluentbit-Kibana (EFK) for logging.
For information about creating namespaces to install BMC Helix Platform services and EFK, see Installing BMC Helix Platform services 22.2.01.
Namespace to install BMC Helix IT Service Management.
Make sure that the namespace name consists of only lowercase alphanumerics and hyphens. Example, 'bmc-itsm'.
Allow service communication between the namespaces where you install BMC Helix IT Service Management and BMC Helix Platform.

The actual namespace names are specific to your environment.

Important

To support Elastic deployment, increase the maximum number of memory maps on each worker node by running following command:

 # echo vm.max_map_count=262144 > /etc/sysctl.d/es-custom.conf

 # sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

For more information, see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current//vm-max-map-count.html.

Where to go from here

Next task

Proceed with Downloading the installation files.

Back to process

If you are finished understanding the Persistent Volume Claim requirements, return to the appropriate installation or upgrade process:

System requirements

Network port requirements

Jenkins server requirements

Harbor repository requirements

Browser support

Namespaces

Where to go from here

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