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    In previous versions of BMC Server Automation, each component was upgraded using an individual component installers and upgrade procedures. BMC Server Automation versions 8.6 and later provide a centralized upgrade UI, the unified product installer, for upgrading multiple BMC Server Automation components at once.This topic includes the following sections:

    Latest version 8.7 upgrade

    The latest upgrade version is Patch 2 for version 8.7. The fixes included in this patch are listed in Known and corrected issues.

    To upgrade to 8.7, see the following:

    To apply the patch to 8.7, follow the instructions in Installing individual components for the specific component you are upgrading. For an example walkthrough of the process, see:

    Before you begin the upgrade

    ItemDescription
    Complete preparatory tasks for upgrade

    Review the tasks to complete prior to upgrade in Preparing for a Windows upgrade or Preparing for a Linux or UNIX upgrade.

    Review requirements for Linux

    Review the key requirements for running the unified product installer on Linux.

    • During an upgrade, the unified product installer automatically installs an RSCD Agent on every Application Server machine that does not already have an agent installed. If you are not interested in providing details of the required credentials, you can install an RSCD Agent manually on each of the detected machines.
    • If you have PXE servers on your setup, you must copy the PXE installers to /tmp path on Linux PXE Servers before starting Unified product installer.
    • NSH must be present on each Application Server machine (that is NSH proxy server, Configuration server, Job server, or PXE server).
    • Run the Unified installer only from an Application Server system that is set up as a Configuration server (for more about this type of Application Server setup, see Application Server types).
    • Run the installer from a computer where a Windows X server is installed.
    • If the host computer on which you are installing the Network Shell has:
      • A supported version of Perl installed — The Network Shell installation automatically installs the Network Shell Perl module. For information about the Perl versions that BMC Server Automation supports, see Perl support.
      • An unsupported version of Perl installed — The installation copies files that allow you to install the Perl module after you have installed the supported version of Perl
    • Ensure that the Bash shell is the default shell on all machines that that BMC Server Automation is being upgrade.

    Review requirements for Windows

    Review the key requirements for running the unified product installer on Windows.

    • During an upgrade, the unified product installer automatically installs an RSCD Agent on every Application Server machine that does not already have an agent installed. If you are not interested in having PsExec installed in your environment or if you are not interested in providing details of the required credentials, you can install an RSCD Agent manually on each of the detected machines.
    • If you have PXE servers on your setup, you must copy the PXE installers to <windows-drive>\Windows (typically C:\Windows) on Windows PXE server before starting Unified product installer.
    • NSH must be present on each Application Server machine (that is NSH proxy server, Configuration server, Job server, or PXE server).
    • Unified installer should be run only from a node set up as a Configuration server (for more about this type of Application Server setup, see Application Server types).
    • During the upgrade, the installer checks the existing version of Perl. If the host computer on which you are installing the Network Shell has:
      • A supported version of Perl installed — The Network Shell installation automatically installs the Network Shell Perl module. For information about the Perl versions that BMC Server Automation supports, see Perl support.
      • An unsupported version of Perl installed — The installation copies files that allow you to install the Perl module after you have installed the supported version of Perl
    • On 64-bit Windows systems, confirm that the <WINDIR>\SysWOW64 directory contains a copy of the chcp.com file. The installer uses this file to set the code page of standard output (stdout). You can obtain the file from a 32-bit version of Windows.

    Review requirements for upgrading individual components

    Review the basic requirements for upgrading using the individual component installers.

    • BMC Server Automation versions 8.6 and later require an RSCD agent installed on each Application Server. If you use the unified product installer, the RSCD agents are installed on Application Servers by the installer. However if you use the Individual component upgrade method, ensure that you have RSCD agents installed on each of the Application Servers to avoid potential errors in the upgrade process.
      If you end up installing the RSCD agent on the application server after the upgrade, you must use the -local option in the installation (as discussed in Installing components using the local option on UNIX or Linux).
    • Similarly, if you use the individual component upgrade method, ensure that Network Shell (NSH) and an RSCD agent are installed on the PXE server before performing the upgrade process.
    • If you use the individual component installer method, you must run the Configurator utility on all Application Servers and PXE servers before upgrading BMC Server Automation. The Configurator utility reads all existing configuration files and populates the database schema with configuration values present in the user environment. This configuration data is saved in the database for the proper function of BMC Server Automation. For more information, see Migrating the database and persisting configuration data to the database

    There are additional requirements for the individual installers, which are listed on each individual installer upgrade topic.

    Review limitations

    Note the limitations when using the unified product installer for product upgrade.

    The unified product installer only supports upgrade of an homogeneous Multiple Application Server (MAS) environment, that is, either all Application Servers run on Linux 64-bit operating systems or all run on Windows 64-bit operating systems. The PXE servers in your environment must also run the same operating system as the Application Servers.  

    Note

    The UPI does NOT require the file server operating system to match the operating system of the Application Servers.

    If your environment includes hybrid PXE servers (that is, PXE servers not running Windows or Linux), see the upgrade workaround described in the "Workaround for hybrid PXE server environments" section of Walkthrough: Upgrading to version 8.7 for Microsoft Windows and Linux.

    Additionally, the unified product installer does not support the following upgrade scenarios:



    Test the upgrade in a duplicate environment

    Prior to upgrading your production system, the best practice is to first test the upgrade using a copy of the production database in another environment.

    The steps in Testing the upgrade in a duplicated environment topic cover the high-level steps that you must perform; the specifics will likely vary, depending on the database in use, the operating systems involved, and the particular environment details.

    Note

    For BMC Server Automation version 8.6 SP1 and later, the task of running SQL Update scripts, which was necessary in the past for any upgrade to a BMC Server Automation patch or service pack, is no longer required during an upgrade. The database upgrade is now handled internally by the unified product installer, which was introduced in version 8.6.

    Information about the upgrade methods

    In previous versions of BMC Server Automation, each component was upgraded using individual component installers and upgrade procedures. BMC Server Automation now provides a centralized upgrade UI for upgrading all BMC Server Automation components. BMC recommends using the centralized UI in the unified product installer, but also provides the individual component installers for operating systems that are not supported by the unified product installer. For a centralized upgrade of multiple product components, you can also choose to run the unified product installer in unattended (silent) mode.

    Proceed with the upgrade using one of the following upgrade methods, based on what you are upgrading:

    Upgrade taskUpgrade methodHow to
    Upgrading the BMC Server Automation environment to this versionUnified product installer

    Upgrading using the unified product installer (interactive)

    Upgrading silently using the unified product installer (unattended)

    Upgrading an individual BMC Server Automation componentComponent level upgrade

    Upgrading using individual component installers

      upgrade_flowchart

    New items installed when you upgrade

    When you upgrade your BMC Server Automation environment using the unified product installer, the installer automatically installs sample content and also enables the quick start page, which is automatically displayed when you log in to the console.

    What kinds of things are installed?

    The blcontent is installed to support the use cases that appear on the quick start page (such as out-of-the-box compliance, discovery, and patching jobs). The blcontent consists of the following:

    • Pre-defined roles
    • Extended objects
    • Component templates 
    • Patch catalogs
    • Jobs (such as out-of-the-box Provisioning Jobs for Windows and Red Hat, agent installer jobs for various platforms, and so on)
    • Depot objects (such as system packages for provisioning, agent installer packages, and so on)

    Some of the content is installed by using ZipKits, which are pre-defined content used for a specific task. 

    ZipKit nameType of objects installedFor more information (link to BMC Communities)
    Patch Ready (Windows)Component template
    Extended object
    Depot objects     		Component Template with Remediation - Patch Readiness for Windows
    Windows 2012 R2 Standard ConfigurationComponent template
    Depot objects     		Component Template with Remediation - Windows 2012 R2 Standard Configuration Example

    Activation Status_Windows

    (For Windows 2008 Servers and above only)

    		Extended objectExtended Object - Display Windows Activation Status
    IIS 8.5 (Windows 2012 R2)Depot object (package)Microsoft IIS 8.5 for Windows 2012 R2
    LAMP on CentOS 6Depot object (package)LAMP for CentOS 6
    Provisioning - Redhat Linux 6.0Depot object (package)Internal zipkit, used by quick start page
    Provisioning - Windows 2012Depot object (package)Internal zipkit, used by quick start page

    There are many other ZipKits available to you for use in your BMC Server Automation environment. To see the full list, go to BMC Communities.

    What if I don't want it? 

    If you do not want these time-to-value enhancements, you can do the following:
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