Planning the upgrade
The following topics will help you to plan your upgrade:
Upgrade paths
Note
You can upgrade directly to BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.00 from BMC Remedy ITSM 7.0.03 patch 009, or a later version.
If, however, you are upgrading from a version earlier than BMC Remedy 7.0.03 patch 009, perform one of the following actions:
- Do a fresh installation of BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.00 and migrate the data.
- First upgrade to BMC Remedy ITSM 7.0.03 patch 009 and then upgrade to 8.1.00.
You will be using one of these upgrade paths to get to the latest version of BMC Remedy ITSM. For each starting version, you must ensure that all components are the correct versions.
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Upgrade path | Description |
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Upgrade Path 1: From versions earlier than 7.6.04 | This upgrade path involves the following process:
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Upgrade Path 2: From version 7.6.04 or later | If you have already created overlays, you can directly upgrade each component to the latest version. The Best Practice Customization mode of BMC Remedy Developer Studio ensures that all customizations are saved as overlays. |
Upgrade phases
At a high level, the upgrade process is split into the following phases for better planning. These phases are valid for both upgrade paths:
Upgrade phase | Description |
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Phase 1: Preupgrade readiness | For this phase, you must plan to ensure that you have prepared the entire environment for a successful upgrade. See Planning preupgrade readiness tasks. |
Phase 2: Upgrade | For this phase, you must consider the upgrade sequence and upgrade type. See Planning upgrade tasks. |
Phase 3: Postupgrade | For this phase, you must plan for postupgrade tasks such overlay reconciliation, performance optimization, and sanity testing. See Planning postupgrade tasks. |
Planning preupgrade readiness tasks
Ensuring preupgrade readiness requires performing of the following tasks:
Task | Additional information |
---|---|
Downloading the latest installers from www.bmc.com/support | See: |
Completing the upgrade checklists | See Completing the planning spreadsheet for an upgrade. |
Ensuring that you meet all minimum version requirements | See Reviewing the compatibility matrix before upgrading. |
Executing the BMC Remedy Configuration utility for overall health check before upgrade | See BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility. |
Backing up the operating systems and database (VM Snapshot) | You must perform the backup before you install each component. |
Practicing the upgrade on a test environment | See Upgrade testing. |
Freezing production rollouts from any administrative changes | — |
Backing up all of the customizations. You must export the customizations from Developer Studio | See Exporting objects. (This topic will open from the BMC Remedy AR System 8.1.00 space). |
Resolving any known issues before the upgrade | See Known and corrected issues. |
Performing server configuration adjustments per the documentation | See Preparing your components and applications for an upgrade. |
Preparing for ITSM CI attribute and multi-tenancy changes | See Update to the multi-tenancy model. |
For detailed information about preupgrade readiness tasks, see Preparing for upgrade.
Planning upgrade tasks
The type of upgrade that you perform depends on which of the following scenarios describes your situation:
Situation | Additional information |
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You want to upgrade a single server or server group environment. | — |
You are upgrading with overlays already implemented or you want to implement them. | See Upgrade and overlays. |
You want to do an in-place (without staging server) or a parallel (with staging server) upgrade. Here, you need to decide if you want to use an accelerated staging or duplicated staging environment. | See |
Note
Refer to the end-to-end steps for performing the upgrade that applies to your specific scenario. See Upgrade scenarios.
Upgrade and overlays
In BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04, the overlays feature was introduced to preserve application customizations during the upgrade process. During an upgrade, the upgrade installers ignore application overlays and change only the objects that were originally installed with the application or server. After the upgrade, the application or server continues to use the overlays instead of the origin objects for runtime operations so that the customizations are preserved. For more information, see Upgrading with overlays already present.
When upgrading from a previous release that was customized without overlays, you will need to create overlays for existing customizations, acquire origin objects, restore origin objects on the staging server, and minimize the number of overlays on your system. For more information, see Upgrading without overlays already present.
The following terms will help you to understand the overlays implementation:
- Custom object: A customer-created object that is not distributed by BMC.
- Origin object: An original, unmodified object that is included with a released BMC product.
- Overlaid object: An origin object that has an overlay associated with it.
- Overlay object: A customized version of an origin object that is used in place of the origin object. In this case, the origin object becomes an overlaid object.
For detailed information about the overlays feature, see Customizing applications using overlays and custom objects in the BMC Remedy AR System documentation.
Parallel versus in-place upgrade
The following table compares the parallel and in-place upgrade methods.
Parallel upgrade (with staging server) | In-place upgrade (without staging server) |
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Uses a staging server, which allows you to upgrade your application and create overlays or otherwise address pre-existing customizations to your BMC Remedy AR System server objects while your production server remains available to users | Additional staging hardware is not needed. Additional load balancer or configuration updates are not needed. |
The original production environment is preserved, allowing fast fallback. | You perform the upgrade in the production environment. |
Minimal end-user downtime | Minimal overall upgrade time and complexity |
Need to perform delta data migration | Delta data migration is not needed. Data validation is not needed. |
Upgrade is not confined to a fixed upgrade window. Upgrade can be done over several days or weeks. | You can perform the upgrade in stages by initially upgrading the BMC Remedy AR System server or BMC Remedy Mid Tier. |
For server group:
| For server group:
|
Accelerated versus duplicated staging server
The following table compares accelerated and duplicated staging servers.
Accelerated staging server | Duplicated staging server |
---|---|
To upgrade using an accelerated staging server (database-only upgrade), you create a copy of the production server database in the staging environment only. | To create a duplicated staging server, you create an exact duplicate of your production server. |
The AR System server must be upgraded on the staging server against the copy of the production server database only. | You must perform a normal upgrade with file system. |
BMC out-of-the-box configurations are applied after the upgrade in the staging environment. | Configurations of the production environment are retained in the staging environment. |
Upgrade scenarios
The following diagram illustrates the upgrade scenarios.
Depending on your upgrade scenario, follow the end-to-end steps documented in one of the following topics:
- Parallel (with staging server) upgrade in a server group with overlays present
- Parallel (with staging server) upgrade on a single server with overlays present
- In-place upgrade on a single server with overlays present
- In-place upgrade in a server group with overlays present
- Parallel (with staging server) upgrade in a server group without overlays present
- Parallel (with staging server) upgrade on a single server without overlays present
Upgrade sequence
You must upgrade the BMC Remedy ITSM suite components in the following sequence:
This sequence implies that you must first upgrade the platform, then upgrade your CMDB, then your applications, and finally all clients that reside on your local computer.
For information about different installers and the components they install, see BMC Remedy ITSM Suite components and installers.
Planning postupgrade tasks
The following diagram shows the postupgrade tasks that you will perform:
Task | Additional information |
---|---|
Base, overlay, and custom objects review | Compare new features with customizations and remove unneeded overlays. |
Performance optimization |
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Sanity testing |
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Tools required for upgrade
You will need the following tools when you upgrade:
Tool | Description |
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Best Practice Conversion Utility (BPCU) | Helps to identify platform and application customizations and convert them to overlays. See Creating overlays with the Best Practice Conversion Utility. |
BMC Remedy Migrator tool | Helps to synchronize data among your BMC Remedy AR System development, staging, and production systems. See Migrator tools. |
Delta Data Migration tool | Allows you to upload the data that changed on a production server during the time that a staging server was being upgraded. You will need this tool to perform the staged upgrade, whether or not overlays are implemented. See Migrator tools. |
BMC Remedy Developer Studio | Required for all upgrades. BMC Remedy Developer Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for BMC Remedy AR System applications. See, Application development with BMC Remedy Developer Studio. |
BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility | The BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility is a centralized framework utility that validates the environment for BMC Remedy AR System installation or upgrade. This utility also validates the BMC Remedy AR System server configuration and customization, and generates a consolidated report. See BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility. |
Snapshot plug-in | To obtain a list of all of the overlay objects that were modified in the latest release, obtain the Snapshot utility (a Developer Studio plug-in). This unsupported utility is available on the BMC Developer Network (https://communities.bmc.com/communities/community/bmcdn). |
Maintenance Tool | Product diagnostic utility for performing health checks, collecting logs, and encrypting passwords. See, BMC Remedy ITSM Maintenance tool. |
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