Maintenance windows
The BMC SaaS Operations team performs regular application and infrastructure maintenance to your non-production and production environments. Here are the types of maintenance you can expect from BMC:
- Monthly Maintenance (includes standard and scheduled maintenance)
- Customer Requested
- Emergency
- Monthly TKU update (BMC Helix Discovery)
- Outpost upgrade (BMC Helix Discovery)
BMC will notify you in advance. Customer approval is only required for customer-requested changes.
You can view the schedule and maintenance windows on your Change Calendar (Support Central > Case Management > Change Calendar).
Monthly maintenance
BMC manages all patching and maintenance of the underlying infrastructure of the BMC Helix services. Monthly maintenance can include:
- Updates to underlying infrastructure including database, network components, and virtual hosts
- Infrastructure migrations and service updates
- Application patches
Standard maintenance windows are published in advance and are typically outside of normal business hours for the region. Reminders are sent at least 7 calendar days before maintenance occurs for non-production systems and at least 21 calendar days before maintenance occurs for production systems. Standard production monthly maintenance windows are a maximum of four hours in duration, with a goal of zero downtime. While most maintenance will not require downtime, infrastructure and shared service updates might require server restarts within this window.
Application maintenance may occur in a monthly push to proactively apply the latest patch, hotfix, or update. Maintenance is typically performed according to the following schedule:
| Environment | Schedule |
|---|---|
| Development | First week of the month |
| QA | Second week of the month |
| Production | Third week of the month |
Infrastructure maintenance may occur in a monthly push to proactively apply server, backup, and security activities. Maintenance is typically performed according to the following schedule:
| Environment | Schedule |
|---|---|
| Non-Production (Development and QA) | First weekend of a full week at the beginning of the month |
| Production | Third week of the month *varies for London and Santa Clara BMC Helix ITSM service locations |
Customer requested maintenance
Most BMC Helix services are updated and maintained proactively by SaaS Operations. However, customers may request service updates or hotfixes. Other customer-requested changes can include Lifecycle Requests or other normal, pre-approved or emergency changes. Examples include a request based on a support ticket opened with BMC, an service update request, or a configuration change.
Emergency maintenance
Emergency changes are required to address a current outage situation in a customer’s environment, or to prevent an imminent outage situation from occurring. Notifications are sent as soon as possible and may be addressed to a specific subgroup if the application is related to a certain set of users. BMC will send a global notification in case of application downtime or other general announcements.
For more details on notifications, see BMC Helix Notification policy.
Standard and scheduled maintenance
IT Operations Management services
| Service Name | Standard production maintenance | Activities performed in the maintenance window |
|---|---|---|
| BMC Helix Operations Management service | Bi-weekly that is a maximum of one hour in duration, with a goal of zero downtime. While most maintenance does not require downtime, infrastructure and shared service updates may require downtime and would be carried out during these maintenance windows. |
|
| BMC Helix Capacity Optimization and BMC Helix Cloud Cost services | ||
| BMC Helix Automation and Security services | ||
| BMC Helix Discovery service |
IT Services Management services
| Service Name | Standard production maintenance | Scheduled maintenance | Activities performed in the maintenance window | Notifications |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMC Helix ITSM service | Standard production monthly maintenance windows are a maximum of four hours in duration, with a goal of zero downtime. While most maintenance does not require downtime, infrastructure and shared service updates may require downtime within this window. | Scheduled maintenance is applied to your systems on a monthly cycle. Your non-production and production systems are assigned to three separate windows in the month based on your geographical region of operations, hosting location, and other architectural factors. Windows for non-production and production environments are typically scheduled two weeks apart. All windows are designed to be executed during off-business hours. Each production maintenance window is scheduled for four hours. |
| Notifications are provided in advance of the next month’s maintenance and contain the following:
For non-production environments, notifications are sent out approximately seven calendar days before the change window. |
| Line of Business service (BMC Helix Business Workflows) | ||||
| BMC Helix Digital Workplace service | ||||
BMC Helix Innovation Suite service | ||||
BMC Helix Client Management service | Upgrades for the BMC Helix Client Management service are by request. To request an upgrade, submit a request through Support Central. | |||
| BMC Helix Innovation Suite service | Standard production monthly maintenance windows are a maximum of four hours in duration, with a goal of zero downtime. While most maintenance does not require downtime, infrastructure and shared service updates may require downtime within this window. | Scheduled maintenance is applied to your systems on a monthly cycle. Your non-production and production systems are assigned to two separate windows in the month based on your geographical region of operations, hosting location, and other architecture factors. Windows for non-production and production environments are typically scheduled five business days apart. All windows are designed to be executed during off-business hours. All windows are designed to be executed during off-business hours. Each production maintenance window is scheduled for four hours. |
| |
| BMC Helix iPaaS | Standard maintenance activities for the BMC Helix iPaaS service are performed with zero downtime and therefore a pre-defined maintenance window is not set. |
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