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Migration best practices

This topic contains the best practices to be adopted when migrating to BMC ProactiveNet 9.6

Migration prerequisites

At a minimum, complete the following actions before attempting a migration:

  • Complete a health check. Get help from BMC upgrade experts through the AMIGO program and migrate only after they confirm that the environment is ready for an upgrade. For information about the AMIGO program, see BMC Communities.
  • Check the system requirements and scalability requirements and properly architect the design for the new environment.
  • If you are installing the 9.6 Integration Services on the existing Integration Service hosts, ensure that there are enough resources available and ensure that the configuration is set up to avoid conflicting ports.

Overall migration process

Migration involves installing new BMC ProactiveNet Servers version 9.6 and Integration Service hosts. The old and new environments run in parallel for some period of time until all BMC PATROL Agents are upgraded to 9.5 and all integrations with the BMC ProactiveNet Server 9.6 are configured, tested, and fully enabled. 

Warning

Note

In a true migration, there are no differences between the BMC ProactiveNet Server and Integration Service versions to be concerned with the new BMC ProactiveNet Server because you will be upgrading all the agents to 9.5 and pointing them to the new environment. 

The migration process involves the following steps in the order listed.

  1. Installing fresh, new BMC ProactiveNet Server(s) and Integration Service nodes on new hosts.
  2. Configuring the new 9.6 Integration Service nodes and event management cells.
  3. Configuring any necessary event processing in the BMC ProactiveNet Server(s). Do not enable event to ticket generation or any other external event propagation from the BMC ProactiveNet Servers at this time.
  4. Configuring monitoring policies in the BMC ProactiveNet 9.6 environment. This must involve developing and testing policies before putting them in production.
  5. Configuring forwarding of events from the new BMC ProactiveNet Server to the earlier version of the BMC ProactiveNet Server.
  6. Creating installation packages for PATROL Agents 9.5 and KMs.

  7. Upgrade agents and KMs. The upgrade process must include pointing the agents to the new infrastructure by assigning them to the new 9.6 Integration Service nodes as the agents are upgraded. For more information, see Upgrading.

    Warning

    Note

    As PATROL Agents 9.5 are installed on new hosts, the installation package must contain the integration settings for the new 9.6 Integration Service hosts.

  8. Maintain event propagation from the BMC ProactiveNet Server 9.6 to the older BMC PraoctiveNet Server until the following is complete:

    1. All agents have been upgraded.
    2. The integration(s) between the BMC ProactiveNet Server 9.6 and external components (for example, Incident Management, Atrium CMDB, xMatters, and so on) are complete and tested.

    This allows you to maintain the older event processing workflows until you are ready to enable all event management, event to ticket generation, other external event propagation, service modeling and other features with the new BMC ProactiveNet Server(s).

  9. After all the agents are upgraded and all external integrations (BMC Remedy IT Service Management, Atrium CMDB, service modeling, xMatters, and so on) are upgraded and tested, enable event management, automated ticket workflows, service modeling, and other features in BMC ProactiveNet 9.6. At this point, you will “go live” in BMC ProactiveNet 9.6. Disable these integrations in the older system(s).
  10. Decommission the older BMC ProactiveNet Server(s) and Integration Services.

Migration workflow

migration_workflow.png

Migration recommendations

Do not try to export monitoring data from older BMC ProactiveNet Server versions and import it into the 9.6 version as part of the migration process. If your requirements mandate that you maintain old monitoring data in the new system, do an upgrade instead of a migration.

Do not try to copy BMC ProactiveNet Server configuration data from an older version and import it into the 9.6 version as part of the migration process. If your requirements mandate that you maintain old configuration data in the new system, do an upgrade instead of a migration.

You may choose to migrate event management configuration data in the event management cell knowledge bases. You can do this by using the migration utility, or you can simply copy the appropriate custom configuration files that you created in the old system to the new system, test them, then move them to production.

Warning

Note

You must run the event management cell migration utility to upgrade an older Knowledge Base to the 9.6 version. However, you can copy custom files in the Knowledge Base and then tested them in a 9.6 cell.

If you have chosen to migrate rather than upgrade, maintain event processing and related workflows so that they are not interrupted. To maintain consistent processes for event management and related workflows, perform one of the following tasks:

  • Continue to leverage the old BMC ProactiveNet Server for event workflows. BMC recommends this method. Events in the new BMC ProactiveNet Server can be propagated to the old BMC ProactiveNet Server for action. Service models, external integrations, and other features can be maintained in the old environment until they have been tested and validated in the new 9.6 environment. In this way, the new environment is a pre-production environment for service models and event management workflows, but is used as a production environment regarding trending and Probable Cause Analysis for that portion of the environment managed by the 9.5 PATROL Agents when the agents are upgraded.
  • Configure the BMC ProactiveNet Server 9.6 for event workflows. In other words, you can do the opposite of the preceding task. That is, set up all event processing and integrations in with BMC ProactiveNet 9.6, publish service models to 9.6, and propagate events from the old system to BMC ProactiveNet 9.6, thus making it the primary system in which all actionable workflows are managed.
Warning

Notes

  • The complete functionality of service models and Probable Cause Analysis requires monitored devices and service models to exist in the same BMC ProactiveNet Server. Consequently, the complete functionality may not be available in the old or new system during the migration. Complete functionality will be available in the new system after migration. This caveat applies primarily to Probable Cause Analysis.
  • The choice between preceding tasks may be dictated by version compatibility and availability with BMC Remedy IT Service Management.

When are earlier versions of Integration Services required?

Some environments may require managing data collection through an earlier Integration Service node into the new 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server(s). This is generally necessary when older PATROL Agents are required and are not supported with 9.6 Integration Service nodes. Example scenarios include the following:

  • Monitoring Windows 2000 Servers
  • Monitoring AS/400
  • Monitoring OpenVMS

If you have a scenario like this to manage, it can be accomplished by integrating the older Integration Service nodes with the new 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server(s). This assumes that you are not upgrading but migrating the environment to BMC ProactiveNet 9.6. This scenario does not move historical data from the earlier BMC ProactiveNet Server(s) into the new 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server. Only new data collected through the earlier Integration Service nodes are collected in the 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server(s).

Follow these steps in the order listed to support this scenario:

  1. Install the new 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server(s).
  2. Add the following properties to the pronet.conf file at installationDirectory\pw\pronto\conf.
    • pronet.admin.menu.showDeprecatedFeaturesForUpgrade=true
    • pronet.admin.menu.showDeprecatedFeaturesForUpgradeAndFresh=true
  3. Close the BMC ProactiveNet Administration Console if open.
  4. Execute the pw jprop reload command at a command prompt. This reloads JServer and Agent Controller properties. No additional restart of the server is required.
  5. Install a new 9.0 or 8.6 Integration Service with the latest service pack applied to be used as an “administrative” Integration Service.
  6. Configure the “administrative” Integration Service to operate in the manual mode, then connect it to the BMC ProactiveNet Server 9.6 through BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration.
  7. Connect older PATROL Agents and KMs to the “administrative” Integration Service. Use test or sample agents for this step. Do not connect all the production agents.
  8. Create manual adapters leveraging the “administrative” Integration Service as you would in the previous version of BMC ProactiveNet. 
  9. After completing the preceding step, configure the older Integration Service nodes in BMC ProactiveNet Servers 9.6. Do this in a controlled manner so that each older Integration Service node is brought in line with the 9.6 BMC ProactiveNet Server one at a time allowing devices and instances to complete synchronization before moving on to the next Integration Service instance.

 

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BMC ProactiveNet 9.6