Version 4.0.00
This topic provides a list of the enhancements included in version 4.0.00 of the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution. The topic also provides an overview of how to get started with the new version.
The topic contains the following sections:
Tip
For information about issues corrected in this release, see Known and corrected issues.
Enhancements in version 4.0
The following sections provide an overview of the enhancements included in version 4.0.00 of the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution.
What's New in version 4.0 video
The following video (12:17) presentation provides a high-level summary of the new features and enhancements in version 4.0.00 of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management.
My Cloud Services Console enhancements
The following table describes the My Cloud Services Console enhancements included in this release.
| Enhancement | Description |
|---|---|
| Request a service offering instance on behalf of another user | This release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management enables the cloud administrator or a tenant administrator to request a service offering instance on behalf of a cloud user. The cloud administrator can request a service offering instance on behalf of any cloud user (including cloud end user, cloud tenant administrator, and a cloud administrator) within the same tenant or across different onboarded tenants. However, a tenant administrator can request a service offering instance on behalf of a cloud user belonging to the same tenant only. For more information, see Requesting cloud services on behalf of another user. |
Transfer ownership of a service offering instance | The cloud and the tenant administrators can now transfer the ownership of a service offering instance from one cloud user to another cloud user. The cloud administrator can transfer the ownership of a service offering instance to a cloud user belonging to the same or different onboarded tenants. When the cloud administrator transfers the ownership across different tenants, the new tenant should be mapped to the same network container. The tenant administrator can transfer the ownership of a service offering instance from one cloud user to another cloud user within the same tenant only. For more information, see the Transferring ownership of service offering instances. |
| Share service offering instances | All cloud users (including cloud administrators, tenant administrators, and end users who are the owners of the service) can now share service offering instances with a cloud user or a group of users. A cloud user can share the service instance only among the users belonging to the same tenant. The cloud users with whom the service offering instances are shared have complete access to the service offering instances, except the access to re-share the service offering instance. For more information, see Sharing services from the My Cloud Services Console. |
Support for Amazon Web Services
Previous versions of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management provided support for the external cloud provider Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). This version extends full management support for Amazon Web Services and provides the cloud administrator with the ability to create and manage requestable offerings and service instances for Amazon Web Services.
With this new support, the cloud administrator will be able to:
- Create and manage virtual public clouds (VPCs)
- Create and manage requestable offerings for Amazon Web Services
- Create and manage service instances
- Onboarding EC2 instances as a single-tier Service Offering Instances
The cloud end user will be able to provision to an availability zone or a VPC.
This version also includes support for:
- Amazon Network ACLs and Security Groups (normalized as Distributed Firewalls)
- Amazon storage services in EBS and S3
For more information, see Managing an Amazon Web Services external provider.
Support for PaaS provisioning
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management now supports platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provisioning. In release 4.0, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management can provision the following types of databases as platforms:
- Oracle RAC
- Oracle Restart
- Oracle Standalone
The process of provisioning a platform such as an Oracle database matches the existing process for provisioning servers. To accommodate PaaS provisioning, new functionality has been added to the process for registering PaaS providers (currently, the only PaaS provider is BMC Database Automation), onboarding PaaS resources, collecting PaaS resources into pools, and creating service blueprints for PaaS resources.
For an end-to-end description of the process, see Setting up and using PaaS provisioning.
New Service Designer
The new Service Designer provides a graphical interface that enables you to create, edit and manage the blueprints that support your service offerings. You can drag and drop objects in the Service Designer, and create connections between them by drawing lines between objects.
Multiple blueprint authors can collaborate on a blueprint using the Blueprint Library, a shared repository of blueprints that authors can check out, edit, and then check back in. Using this check-out/check-in process creates versions of a blueprint, enabling you to use a single blueprint for multiple service offerings.
You can also include blueprints within other blueprints. For example, you might have a standard blueprint for a server with applications. You could include that blueprint in one or more other, more complex service blueprints.
For more information, see Service blueprints overview and Building service blueprints.
New Network Designer
Using the new Network Designer, a Cloud Administrator can visually model an Amazon Web Services Virtual Public Cloud (VPC), specifying a variety of components, such as networks, routing rules, NAT services, firewalls and load balancers.
The Network Designer workspace enables Cloud Administrator to create, edit, and delete network blueprints. A network blueprint is a topology blueprint used to carve out logical network isolations from physical devices. Cloud Administrators can create simple network blueprints that set up a public-facing network to host a web application, or more complex blueprints that connect public cloud resources in a private, non-Internet facing corporate datacenter.
For more information, see Creating and managing network blueprints.
Upgraded service monitoring capabilities
In version 4.0 offers a more detailed look at the health of your services, enabling you to create charts that reveal real-time or historical performance data for your servers. You can also drill down in a chart for a more granular view of a server's performance data, allowing you to pinpoint issues when troubleshooting
See Monitoring services with charts for more information.
This release also supports the ability to create policies that perform an action when a service breaches threshold criteria you set. You can create remediation policies that attempt to resolve a performance problem as soon as it occurs. For example, you can create a policy that adds CPU when CPU Utilization exceeds 90% for 10 minutes. You can also create notification policies that send email when your service breaches the criteria you set.
See Creating service monitoring policies for more information.
These new service monitoring capabilities must be enabled by cloud administrators. See Managing service monitoring for more information.
Reusable post-deployment options
You can now create post-deployment options for multiple service offerings. Having a streamlined library of options enables you to reduce redundancy, and build your service offerings faster and with less chance for error. For example, if you want to allow users to modify the memory of their provisioned services, you can create a single post-deployment option for modifying memory of one service offering, and then associate the same post-deployment option with all of your other service offerings. For more information about defining post-deployment options, see Service Catalog options and option choices.
Virtualization enhancements
The following table describes the virtualization enhancements included in this release.
| Enhancement | Description |
|---|---|
Support for datastore clusters | Previous versions of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management did not support VMware datastore clusters. With this version, the cloud administrator has the ability to:
Note This capability applies only to VMware datastore clusters.
Onboarding a VMware virtual cluster also onboards any associated datastore clusters. The VMware datastore clusters appear under the Virtual Disk Repository resource type with the following format in the Type column: Cluster:<fileType>. For example, a Network File System (NFS) data store cluster would be displayed in the Type column as Cluster: NFS, as shown below in the Resources view.  For more information, see the following topics: |
| Operational state synchronization | As a cloud administrator, tenant administrator, or end user, you now have the ability to refresh data for service instances and servers, to ensure that you always work with current data. The new Synchronize icon For more information, see Refreshing service instances. |
| Support for VMware vCloud Director |
For more information about the support for VMware vCloud Director, see Managing a VMware vCloud instance. |
| Compute resource availability | A new Availability column is included on the Create Compute Pool dialog. This new column is displayed for the Virtual Resource, Virtual Host, and Virtual Disk Repository resource types. A value of Available indicates that the virtual resource can be used as an active resource in the compute pool. Items displayed as Unavailable have been marked for deletion and should not be included as a compute resource for the pool. For more information, see Creating compute resource pools. |
Networking enhancements
The following table describes the networking enhancements included in this release.
| Enhancement | Description |
|---|---|
| Pod and container management enhancements | This release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management contains enhancements to make it easier to manage pods and network containers. With these enhancements, the administrator can:
This capability enables you to scale the pod when resource pools are exhausted or new node and pairs need to be added. See the online technical documentation for BMC Network Automation for information about editing a pod.
Note Creating a network container from a previous version blueprint or modifying a network container created in a previous version do not support the pre-populated additional parameters. In these cases, you can add a parameter by clicking the Add button on the Additional Parameters panel. |
| DDI integration | The cloud administrator now has the ability to specify the DNS server for the container-level networks and NAT pools when creating the container. This DDI (DNS, DHCP and IPAM) integration provides the ability to:
For more information, see Implementing integrated DNS, DHCP and IP address Management. |
| Firewall management enhancements | This release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management contains enhancements to make it easier to manage the firewalls associated with a network container. With these enhancements, the administrator can:
For more information, see Creating and editing firewall rules. |
| New platform support | This release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management contains the following new platform support for networking:
For details, see Configuring vendor-specific devices. |
Quick Start enhancements
The following table describes Quick Start enhancements included in this release.
| Enhancement | Description |
|---|---|
| Import of existing VMs | Quick Start lets you identify existing VMs and import them into BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management so they each become a service offering instance (SOI). For more information, see Onboarding existing VMs. |
| Viewing results of previous onboardings | Quick Start lets you view VMs that were previously onboarded. For more information, see Viewing results of previous VM onboardings. |
| Automatic rollback | For most steps in Quick Start, when a failure occurs, Quick Start now automatically rolls back all content created during that step. For more information, see Automatic rollback. |
| Simplified GUI | Quick Start now provides the option of using a simplified GUI that leads you through the process of setting up provisioning. Quick Start also optionally provides the same user interface introduced in previous releases. Both interfaces perform the same tasks. Below is the introductory page for the new simplified interface. For more information about the two interfaces, see Using Quick Start. |
| Amazon credentials | To better integrate with AWS, Quick Start provides a new approach to entering AWS credentials. For more information, see New Connector page - Amazon. |
| Exclude multiple networks | When defining vCenter connectors or environments, Quick Start now lets you exclude an IP address or range of IP addresses for each network you define. For more information, see Network Pod page and Networks page - vCenter. |
| Predefined network aliases | When defining vCenter connectors or environments, Quick Start now lets you select a predefined network alias or enter your own. For more information, see Network Pod page and Networks page - vCenter. |
| Service offering options for vCenter | When defining a service offering for vCenter provisioning, Quick Start now includes out-of-the-box options that allow the end user to specify the CPU count and memory. For more information, see Service Offering page - vCenter. |
| Service offering options for Amazon | When defining a service offering for Amazon, Quick Start now includes out-of-the-box options that allow the end user to specify the type of EC2 instance: micro, small, medium or large. Defining a service offering also lets you allocate a public IP address to the VM. For more information, see Service Offering page - Amazon. |
Tenant management enhancements
The following table describes the tenant management enhancements in this release.
| Enhancement | Description |
|---|---|
| Creating tenants from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management | In this release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, a cloud administrator can create tenants or organizations directly in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. When a tenant company is created in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, you need not onboard or import it in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. For more information, see Creating and importing tenants. |
| Importing existing tenants | The cloud administrator can still create tenant companies in BMC Remedy IT Service Management Foundation and onboard or import them in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. For more information, see Creating and importing tenants. |
Creating users from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management | In previous versions of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, the cloud administrator could add people records in a company by using BMC Remedy IT Service Management only. In this release, the cloud administrator can now create cloud users for all the tenants by using BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. A tenant administrator can also create and manage users within the same tenant in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management by using the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management – Tenant Administration Console. For more information, see Creating and managing users in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. |
| Managing and monitoring quota for tenant companies and users | This release of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management enables the cloud administrator to allocate and monitor resources to a company or a tenant. A tenant is allocated certain quota, and based on the available quota, the cloud or a tenant administrator can further allocate and monitor quota to the cloud users. For more information, see Setting and managing quota. |
BMC Compact RDS (Single VM)
In the 4.0 release, BMC Compact RDS (Single VM) in both the Windows and Linux environments replaces the 3.x Proof of Concept deployment. You can install BMC Compact RDS with only one required computer. You can deploy or upgrade all components on a single host. BMC Compact RDS is a subset of the complete BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution and consists of the following products:
- BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0 standalone VM
- Built-in database instance (Oracle XE 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit)
- BMC Server Automation Content (Compliance and Patching)
- Mid Tier Object list enabled out-of-the-box
- Baby POD sample XML already imported in BMC Network Automation
- BMC Network Automation with TFTP server
- Automation Tool (Database import/export and Database Application Changes )
- Hostname changes
- Database Migration Utility
- Remote Change Management
- Amazon AWS sample blueprint
In typical circumstances, you can install the Compact Deployment in less than a day. For more information, start with Planning the BMC Compact RDS deployment.
Establishing the BMC Compact RDS platform
BMC Compact RDS establishes one pre-production cloud environment for you to use out-of-the-box. The BMC Compact RDS platform:
- Establishes one Bronze network container
- Configures the Infoblox + QIP IPAM + DNS integration.
- Integrates Active Directory.
Populating the Service Catalog in BMC Compact RDS
BMC Compact RDS enables hybrid cloud services. Out-of-the-box, BMC Compact RDS offers the following Service Catalog functionality:
- Configures two Windows or Red Hat Linux services, on Amazon Web Services or VMware.
- Configures one PaaS (Platform as a Service) service deployment for the LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) or WAMP (Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP) stacks.
- Defines service governor placements policies.
Deployment architecture modified to single AR System server
For new 4.0 installations, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management no longer supports two separate AR System servers, commonly distinguished as "Enterprise-AR" and "Cloud-AR." This single AR System server model makes future upgrades easier and more dependable. As a result, DSO is no longer necessary to communicate between the two servers.
However, when you upgrade from 2.1.x or 3.x, you still separately upgrade the Enterprise-AR and Cloud-AR servers.
New Software Development Kit
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management now includes a Software Development Kit (SDK), which provides a simple way to perform task-based API operations in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. You do not need to interact directly with the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management RESTful API. Instead, the SDK provides Python bindings to the full RESTful API, enabling you to use a Python command-line, code, or scripts to complete BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management operations with a simplified syntax.
For more information about the SDK, see Software Development Kit.
Onboarding existing VMs
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management enables you to onboard existing VMs as SOIs. You can onboard single-tier VMs through Quick Start, as documented in Onboarding existing VMs. You can onboard single-tier and multi-tier VMs through the RESTful API, as documented in Onboarding existing VMs (checklist).
Installation and upgrade enhancements
The 4.0 release introduced numerous improvements to the installer program; it is much more robust and easier-to-use.
- You can install more products in fewer sessions, thus reducing the possibility of introducing user error. In a new installation, you can select multiple products, install as many products as you can, and then exit the installer if needed. You can resume installation later without "confusing" the installer. Even if a product installation fails, you can gracefully exit the installer, fix the problem, and resume installation without any loss of state.
- During upgrade, integration with existing products is no longer a separate prerequisite step. When you choose to upgrade to 4.0 from 2.1.x or 3.x, you seamless move from integration to upgrade in the same session.
- Installer supports single AR System server (Enterprise-AR) deployment for fresh installations. The AR System Server - Cloud Database (Cloud-AR or Cloud-DB) node is removed from the installer. Because you no longer need DSO to communicate between the two AR System servers, the DSO Mapping node is removed from the installer as well.
- The reduce the time to install the products, the installer now deploys AR System, BMC Atrium Core, and BMC Service Request Management only. The core 4.0 features do not require BMC IT Service Management or BMC Service Level Management unless you implement the optional Change Integration use case. BMC IT Service Management Foundation is still fully installed as part of the 4.0 core functionality.
- During upgrade, the installer skips BMC IT Service Management and BMC Service Level Management by default, thus reducing upgrade time significantly.
- For Linux installations, the installer lets you enter a remote staging directory. This staging value will be used on all products installed in the current session.
Support for Remote Change Management integration
The 4.0 release of the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution supports remote Change Management integration as an option with new installations. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution can integrate with supported versions of BMC Remedy Change Management installed on a remote server.
Note
The supported versions of BMC Remedy Change Management that you can integrate are 7.6.04 SP1, 8.0, and 8.1.01.
For upgrades, BMC Change Management application remains part of the BMC AR System Server and IT Service Management Suite server, and the integration continues to work without interruption.
Support for BMC Zipkits for Cloud
The following table describes the BMC ZipKits for Cloud included in this release:
| Zipkit | Description |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure | To learn how to create services with the new infrastructure application ZipKits, see Configuring infrastructure application ZipKits. |
| Resource Providers | To learn how to integrate a third-party infrastructure solution (Azure, Savvis, OpenStack, and Terremark) as a provider type in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, see Configuring external resource provider ZipKits. |
| Toolkit | To learn how to use the available ZipKit toolkits, see Working with the eZDeploy utility. |
Product versions and compatibility
Note
BMC does not automatically certify newer versions of compatible products like VMWare vSphere, Oracle, SQL Server, Linux, and so on. However, BMC does support customers running newer versions of these products as long as backward-compatibility is guaranteed. For more information about compatible products, see the Compatibility Matrix, located in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management compatibility section of the Product Availability and Compatibility site at http://www.bmc.com/support.
When you upgrade to version 4.0, review the following table for the minimum version requirement for each product and the version each product is upgraded to.
Product | Minimum version required for upgrade | Version upgraded to in Cloud 4.0 | Is Backward compatible? |
|---|---|---|---|
BMC Remedy AR System Server and BMC Remedy Mid Tier | 7.6.04 SP1 | 8.1.01 | Yes |
BMC Server Automation | 8.1.02 Patch 001 | 8.5.00 | Yes |
BMC Network Automation | 8.1.02 | 8.5.00.01 |
|
BMC Atrium Orchestrator | 7.6.01.04 | 7.6.02.04-FCS | Yes |
BMC Atrium Orchestrator Content | 7.6.05 | 20.12.04 | No |
BMC Service Request Management | 7.6.04 SP1 | 8.1.01 | No |
BMC Atrium Core Web Services | 7.6.04 SP2 | 8.1.01 | No |
BMC Atrium Core | 7.6.04 SP2 | 8.1.01 | No |
| Atrium Integrator | Not applicable for 2.1.00. | 8.1.01 |
|
PXE Server | 8.1.02 Patch 001 | 8.5.00 | No |
Cloud Portal AR Extensions | 2.1.00 | 4.0 | No |
Cloud Platform Manager | 2.1.00 | 4.0 | No |
Cloud Database Extensions | 2.1.00 | 4.0 | No |
BMC ProactiveNet products no longer supported
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management no longer supports the installation or upgrade of BMC ProactiveNet products. If you install or upgrade BMC ProactiveNet Central Server or BMC ProactiveNet Server, you must download the standalone installer from EPD and integrate them through Cloud Vista integration.
Downloading the files
For download instructions, see Downloading the installation files.
Download all the files in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0.00 folder.
Installing the version as a fresh installation
- If you do not already have BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management installed in your environment, perform the procedures in the Installing section using the downloaded files.
Ensure that the supported products are at the latest service pack or patch level listed in the following table. Review especially any required hotfixes.
Required products Version in 4.0 installer 8.1.01
BMC Atrium Core Web Registry 8.1.01 BMC Atrium Orchestrator Content
(cloud-specific content)4.0.00 BMC Atrium Orchestrator Platform, including:
- BMC Atrium Orchestrator – Configuration Distribution Peer
- BMC Atrium Orchestrator – Configuration Distribution Peer (High Availability)
7.6.02.04 BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, including:
- Cloud Database Extensions
- Cloud Platform Manager
- Cloud Portal AR Extensions
4.0.00 BMC Network Automation, including:
- (Optional) BMC Network Automation – Device Agent
8.5.00.01 BMC Remedy Action Request System 8.1.01 BMC Remedy Mid Tier 8.1.01 BMC Remedy Service Request Management 8.1.01 BMC Server Automation, including:
- BMC Server Automation – Application Server and Console
- BMC Server Automation – Virtual Center Agent (installed manually)
- (Optional) BMC Server Automation – Advanced Repeater
- (Optional) BMC Server Automation – PXE Server
- (Optional) BMC Server Automation – File Server
8.5.00
Upgrading to the new version
If you are upgrading from any previous version to version 4.0, you must review the items in the Upgrade considerations topic and complete all the prerequisites for the upgrade to successfully complete the upgrade process. Ensure that the supported products are at the latest service pack or patch level listed in Component BMC product service pack and patch levels.
Note
You do not need to perform the data migration steps while upgrading from version 3.1 to 3.1.01. You can upgrade your system by performing the steps listed in the Performing the upgrade section.
Comments
Log in or register to comment.