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Preparing for upgrade

Before you start upgrading the products in the solution, review this section carefully to plan for your upgrade.The upgrade process consists of several steps. Therefore, BMC recommends that you plan the upgrade first. The following topics are covered in this section:

Upgrade prerequisites

Perform the following prerequisites before you upgrade the products in the solution:

  • Perform the prerequisites steps for the upgrade, such as taking required backups, updating distributed server option (DSO) information.
  • Review the upgrade sequence to determine the order of product upgrades. You must perform the upgrade in this defined order.
  • Based on your business needs and resource availability, determine whether you want to upgrade products in a staging, production, or hybrid environment. Each of these upgrade options have pros and cons. Ensure that you understand the considerations for these environments and then make the decision.
  • Based on the backward compatibility of the products in the solution, the products are divided in two zones: zone 1 and zone 2. Ensure that you review these zones and plan the upgrade based on the backward compatibility and upgrade environment options that are available to you.

Upgrading products by backward compatibility

As shown in the upgrade process flow diagram, you must upgrade the products in the solution based on their backward compatibility. This means that when you upgrade a product to the latest version in the solution, that product will continue to be compatible with other products of older version. For example, if you upgrade BMC Server Automation to version 8.2.00, it will continue to work with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 2.1. The upgraded BMC Server Automation product would not have any impact on the solution production environment.

Products

Recommendations

 

Zone 1 (Backward compatible products)

  • BMC Server Automation
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator (upgrade only if you are not using the Atrium Orchestrator Content shipped with the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution)
  • BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management
  • BMC Capacity Optimizer (not include in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution)
  • Because the products in zone 1 are backward compatible, you can perform the upgrade in separate maintenance windows or you can upgrade them all in one window. The upgraded product will continue to work with other non-upgraded products in this zone, even if not all products are upgraded in the same maintenance window. 
  • BMC recommends that you upgrade zone 1 products in the production environment (in-place).

 

Zone 2 (Backward non-compatible products)

  • BMC Remedy AR System & BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite
  • BMC Remedy AR System -- Cloud Database
  • Cloud Platform Manager
  • BMC Network Automation
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator (upgrade only if you are using the Atrium Orchestrator Content shipped with the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution)
  • Upgrade products in zone 2 only after you have completed the upgrade for zone 1 products.
  • Because the products in zone 2 are not backward compatible, you must upgrade these products in one maintenance window. If you upgrade one product in this zone and try to continue using the 2.1.x environment, the solution will not work.
  • Because the time required to upgrade these products is greater than zone 1 products, BMC recommends that you upgrade these products in a staging environment. Creating a staging environment and upgrading the products in that environment ensures that you are able to keep a 2.1.x environment running while you complete the upgrade process.

 

Upgrading products in production versus staging environment

The following table explains the advantages and disadvantages of upgrading in a staging versus production environments:

Production versus staging factors

Upgrade environment

Advantages

Disadvantages

Production

  • Minimal hardware and other resources are required.
  • Can spread across several maintenance windows.
  • No tracking of data changes required.

In 2.1.x  environment, required longer downtime.

Staging

  • Leverages in-place upgrade environments of other base products in the solution.
  • Staging stack becomes the production stack and the end of the upgrade.
  • Minimizes downtime.
  • Requires additional hardware and other resources.
  • Requires that you keep track of the customizations and data changes that you made to the 2.1.x production environment to be able to port those changes and customizations to the 3.0 environment post-upgrade.

 

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