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Upgrade options

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management component products are categorized as backward compatible (Zone 1) or non-backward compatible (Zone 2), as shown in the following upgrade process flow diagram.

Note

The following diagram illustrates the 3.x to 4.0 upgrade process. For the end-to-end 2.1.x to 4.0 process, see Performing the upgrade.

For the steps that require you to perform an ordered set of tasks, appropriate links are provided in the diagram. For the steps that do not have any links, perform the steps as you did during installation, for example, taking backups of your databases.

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 the older version. For example, if you upgrade BMC Server Automation to version 8.5.00, it will continue to work with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0. 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—Platform
  • BMC Network Automation
  • BMC Capacity Optimizer (not included in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management)

Because the products in Zone 1 are backward compatible, you can perform the upgrade in separate periods of maintenance time, or you can upgrade them all in the same maintenance period. An upgraded Zone 1 product will continue to work with other non-upgraded products in this zone, even if not all products are upgraded in the same maintenance period.

BMC recommends that you upgrade Zone 1 products in the production environment (in-place).

Note: BMC Network Automation in Zone 1 is only backward-compatible while upgrading from 3.x to 4.0.

Zone 2 (Non-backward compatible products):

  • BMC Remedy AR System & BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite
  • BMC Remedy AR System—Cloud Database
  • Cloud Platform Manager
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator—Content

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 period. If you upgrade one product in this zone and try to continue using the 2.1.x environment, the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution will not work.

Because the time required to upgrade Zone 2 products is greater than the time to upgrade 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.

Upgrade methods

Based on the time you have available for upgrading BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and the resources you have available to perform the upgrade, you can choose to perform the following methods:

  • In-place—Upgrade all BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management components in their current installation environment.
  • Staged—Upgrade BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management components in a separate environment, which becomes the production environment.
  • Staged lite—An extension of the staged upgrade, a staged lite upgrade uses one node (a primary node from the production High Availability environment) to form primary nodes of the staged lite environment. The secondary environment becomes the go-live environment after the upgrade has completed. Note that you can opt to create the primary nodes of the staged lite environment anew instead of removing the primary node of production environment, similar to the staged environment method.

Upgrade method

Advantages

Disadvantages

In-place

  • Requires minimal additional hardware and other resources
  • You can spread the upgrade across several periods of maintenance time
  • There is no need to track data changes during the upgrade process

Requires a longer period of downtime

Staged

  • Minimizes downtime
  • The staging environment becomes the production environment, simplifying the go-live process
  • You can leverage the upgrade environments of the component products already in place
  • Requires additional hardware
  • Requires that you track the data changes and customizations between your production and upgrade environments so you can replicate those changes and customizations in the upgraded environment

Staged Lite (for High Availability components)

  • Minimizes downtime compared to an in-place upgrade
  • Requires fewer additional resources than the full staged upgrade
  • The staging environment becomes the production environment, simplifying the go-live process
  • You can leverage the upgrade environments of the component products already in place
  • Requires some additional hardware
  • Has a longer downtime than a full staged upgrade
  • The production environment will run in a non-High Availability mode during the upgrade because secondary servers are removed to form the upgrade environment

Depending on the method of upgrade you choose, you might need additional resources, as explained in the following table. For this comparison, every component is assumed to be installed in High Availability mode with two nodes each, except BMC Atrium Orchestrator which uses 3 nodes. Database instances are for the Enterprise BMC Remedy AR System, Cloud AR System Extensions, BMC Network Automation, and BMC Atrium Web Services.

Note

Because BMC Network Automation is backward compatible with 3.x, no additional VM or database instance is required. The following table shows the prerequisites for upgrading 2.1.x to 4.0. This applies to both the staged and staged-lite strategies.

Upgrade method

Additional VMs

Additional database instances

In-place

0

0

Staged

15 (2 for each of the following except BMC Atrium Orchestrator Repository, which requires 3):

  • BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Cloud Database
  • BMC Remedy ITSM
  • BMC Network Automation
  • BMC Atrium Web Services
  • BMC Remedy AR System Midtier
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator CDP
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator Repository

3:

  • BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Cloud Database
  • BMC Remedy ITSM
  • BMC Atrium Web Services

Staged-lite

When removing the primary node, 2:

  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator CDP
  • BMC Atrium Orchestrator Repository

When removing the primary node, 2:

  • BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Cloud Database
  • BMC Remedy ITSM

Where to go next

Prerequisites-for-upgrade

 

 

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