Preparing the AR System server to install BMC Atrium Core and other BMC applications

The BMC Atrium Core installer prompts you to enter information about the BMC Remedy AR System server. The following steps will help you prepare your system to install the BMC Atrium Core features on the AR System server.

1. Review relevant technical bulletins and patches on the BMC Support site before you install BMC Atrium Core.
2. Review online documentation and white papers.
   • Review the AR System online documentation.
   • Review the BMC Atrium Core online documentation.
   • Check the BMC Support site for white papers, such as Performance Tuning for Business Service Management, that might contain information to help you optimize your environment for installation.
3. Make sure that the AR System server is correctly licensed.
   BMC Atrium Core requires an AR System server with a multi-server license.
4. If you want to install the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite applications, and if you are using a different user, make sure that BMC Atrium Core user is a member of the Administrator group in the BMC Remedy AR System User form.
5. Temporarily disable the escalations on the AR System server.
   Make sure that BMC Remedy AR System is set to Disable Escalations. The BMC Atrium Core installation does not complete successfully if BMC Remedy AR System is not set to Disable Escalations.
   1. Log on to your AR System server.
   2. Open the AR System Administration Console.
   3. Choose System > General > Server Information.
   4. In the Server Information form, click the Configuration tab.
   5. Select the Disable Escalations option.
   6. Click OK.
6. Disable temporarily AR System server encryption.
   Installation of BMC Atrium Core on an encrypted AR System server is not supported. You can enable encryption after installation.
   1. Log on to the AR System server.
   2. Open the AR System Administration Console.
   3. Choose System > General > Server Information.
   4. From the Server Information form, click the Encryption tab.
   5. In the New Encryption Settings area, choose Disabled in the Security Policy list, and click Apply.
   6. Restart the AR System server.

      Note

      Re-enable escalations and encryption when you finish installing all the BMC applications.

7. Because BMC Remedy AR System can restrict the size of attachments, verify that your setting for attachments is set to at least 500k during the installation.
   You can change this setting to a smaller limit after the installation (the default is zero).
8. Set the Next Request ID Block Size parameter to 100.
   BMC recommends setting the Next Request ID Block Size parameter to 100 to improve performance when creating entries on an AR System server configured for multi-threading. This includes creating instances in BMC Atrium CMDB, such as during bulk data load from a discovery application or a reconciliation merge or copy activity.

   Warning

   If you have custom workflow that depends on consecutive request IDs, a Next Request ID Block Size greater than 1 causes inconsistent results.

   1. Open the AR System Application Console.
   2. Select System > General > Server Information.
   3. Click the Platform tab.
   4. Enter Server Name Alias, and click Apply to retrieve the server information.
   5. Click the Configuration tab.
   6. In the Next Request ID Block Size field, type 100.
   7. Click OK.
9. Set the size limit for the AR System database.
   If you do not set size limits correctly, the database size limit might be reached.
   To prevent BMC Remedy AR System from reaching the size limit of the database, perform the following changes:
   • For Microsoft Windows using SQL Server — Open SQL Server Enterprise Manager and select the Automatically Grow File option for your AR System database.
   • For UNIX using Oracle — Execute the following SQL statement as the system user:
     ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE 'OracleHome/DATABASE/ARSYS' AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 100M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED;

     Note

     You do not need to commit or restart the server after you make the changes.

10. Set the JVM heap size for the Tomcat server.
    If you use an existing Tomcat server instance, BMC recommends setting the JVM heap size of Tomcat servers to a minimum value of 1024 MB and a permanent generation size of 256 MB. Otherwise, you might see OutOfMemory errors and a failure to publish web services to the BMC Atrium Core Registry.
    • Setting the JVM heap size for a Windows computer
      1. Stop the Tomcat server.
      2. Run the tomcat6w application to open the Apache Tomcat Tomcat6 Properties dialog box. You can find tomcat6w.exe in the C:\Program Files \Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat6.0\bin folder.
      3. Click the Java tab.
      4. Set Maximum Memory Pool to 2048 MB or higher.
      5. In the Java Options list, set XX:MaxPermSize to 256 MB or higher.

         Note

         If you do not find XX:MaxPermSize in this list, look for XX:PermSize. Set this parameter to 256 MB or higher. If you cannot find either of these parameters in the Java Options list, add either XX:PermSize or XX:MaxPermSize using the following syntax:
         -XX:MaxPermSize=256m or -XXPermSize=256m.

      6. Click Apply and then click OK.
      7. Start the Tomcat server.
    • Setting the JVM heap size for a UNIX computer
      1. Stop the Tomcat server.
      2. Locate the catalina.sh file in the tomcat\bin directory.
      3. Export the following parameter in the catalina.sh file:
         export CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"
      4. Start the Tomcat server.
11. On IBM AIX, enable the full installation.
    When installing on AIX, set the ncargs system attribute to 32 or higher to ensure that all directories are installed.
    1. Check your current ncargs value by executing this command:
       lsattr -E -l sys0 -a ncargs
    2. If ncargs is not set to a value of 32 or higher, set it to 32 (or a higher value) by typing this command:
       chdev -l sys0 -a ncargs=32
12. If you are using a Linux or a UNIX computer, and you choose to run setup.bin in place of setup.sh, you must specify the limit on the number of file descriptors (5000) a process may have by using the ulimit command. Use the following syntax: ulimit -n 5000. 
    For non-root user, make sure that the "open files" limit of the shell is set to 16384. For this, you must modify the /etc/security/limits.conf file.
    On AIX computers, specify the limit on the number of file descriptors (unlimited) a process may have by using the following syntax: ulimit -n unlimited.
13. Disable applications running on port 12333.
    To prevent port conflicts with port 12333, disable any applications running on port 12333 before you install. After the installation is complete, programs can resume using port 12333.

    Note

    BMC Atrium Core is installed using InstallAnywhere, a multi-platform software deployment solution. Because InstallAnywhere uses port 12333 for installing BMC Atrium Core, you must free the port before you begin with the installations.

14. Verify if the bc utility is present on UNIX.
    Before you begin to install BMC Atrium Core, make sure that the bc utility is installed in your environment.
    When you begin to install BMC Atrium Core, the installer verifies that the bc utility exists in your environment. You will not be able to continue with the installation if the utility is not present.
15. For improved performance if you are using the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite applications with the BMC Atrium CMDB, run your BMC Remedy AR System server on a private RPC socket with the following values:
    • Windows:
      • RE-RPC-Socket 390698 (for the Reconciliation Engine)
      • Private-RPC-Socket 390698 10 10 (for the BMC Remedy AR System Server)
    • UNIX:
      • RE-RPC-Socket 390698 (for the Reconciliation Engine)
      • Private-RPC-Socket 390698 6 6 (for the AR System server)

        Note

        You can also use port number 390699, but the port numbers for the BMC Remedy Reconciliation Engine and the AR System server must match.

16. To allow BMC Service Request Management run on a private server, configure the BMC Remedy AR System server to run on a private server first. For more information about private servers, see Configuring the AR Server Settings page.
17. If you configured the AREA plug-ins after installing BMC Remedy AR System, set the value of the Authentication-Chaining-Mode parameter in the ar.cfg (ar.conf) file to ARS - AREA if the current value is AREA - ARS.

    Note

    Restart the server before installing or upgrading the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite.
    After the upgrade is complete, restore Authentication-Chaining-Mode to its original setting.

18. If you have changed the AR tcp port, update the port number details in the ar.cfg and the ARSystemInstalledConfiguration.xml.