Minimum software requirements

The following sections describe software requirements for installing components of a BMC Server Automation system:

• Supported databases
• Requirements for GUI support on UNIX
• Requirement for installing the Application Server, BMC Server Automation Console, or Network Shell on Linux
• Virtualization support
• Perl support
• BMC Decision Support for Server Automation requirements
• HP-UX 11.11 patch requirements
• Citrix patch requirements
• Solaris 10.0 patch requirements
• Linux and Solaris Tuning Parameters
• Third-party software

Supported databases

The BMC Server Automation product supports the following database types and versions:

IPv6 support for database

The following databases do not have support for IPv6 in BMC Server Automation:

• Oracle 11g R2 RAC
• Oracle 12c
• Oracle 12c RAC

Oracle 11.2.0.2 patch requirement

If you plan to use Oracle version 11.2.0.2 as the database for BMC Server Automation, before you install BMC Server Automation, you must install the appropriate patch to Oracle 11.2.0.2:

• Linux and UNIX platforms: Patch 9620994
• Windows 32 and 64-bit platforms: Oracle 11.2.0.2 Patch 4 (or later) bundle, which contains Patch 9620994.

To determine if this patch is installed on your Oracle 11.2.0.2 database:

1. On the database server, ensure that the ORACLE_HOME variable is set to the 11.2.0.2 installation directory.
2. Run the command to locate Patch 9620994:
   • Linux and UNIX platforms:
     $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory | grep 9620994
   • Windows:
     %ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\opatch lsinventory | findstr 9620994

Requirements for GUI support on UNIX

To run the BMC Server Automation Console and the Post-Install Configuration wizard on UNIX, the OS-specific x11 libraries for the supported variants of UNIX are required.

Requirement for installing the Application Server, BMC Server Automation Console, or Network Shell on Linux

Requirement for RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 4 and 5

If you plan to install the Application Server, the BMC Server Automation Console or the Network Shell on Linux, ensure that the libtermcap.so.2 shared library (and libtermcap.so.6 shared library in case of unified product installer) is installed. To determine if termcap is installed, run the following command:
rpm -qa | grep libtermcap

If this command does not return libtermcap-xxx, install the library from installation media or download and install it from a trusted gnu distribution site.
The libtermcap.so.2 shared library you install depends on the platform of the Application Server, the BMC Server Automation Console or the Network Shell you are installing. If you are installing the:

• 32-bit version of these components on a 64-bit operating system--Install the 32-bit version of libtermcap.so.2.
• 64-bit version of these components on a 64-bit operating system--Install the 64-bit version of libtermcap.so.2.

Requirement for RHEL 6

In RHEL 6 the package name has changed to compat-libtermcap. To install compat-libtermcap on Red Hat version 6, you can use one of the following commands:

• If you have YUM installed and configured: {{yum install compat-libtermcap})
• If you have the RPM package (available from the installation CD): rpm -Uvh compat-libtermcap-2.0.8-49.el6.x86_64.rpm

Requirement for RHEL 7

In RHEL 7, the agentctl start command fails to restart the RSCD Agent after the Agent is installed using a shell based installer.

As a workaround, run ln -s /lib64/libtinfo.so.5 /lib64/libtermcap.so.2 command before installing RSCD Agent.

Virtualization support

You can use the Servers workspace in BMC Server Automation to manage the virtual infrastructure of the platforms shown in the following table.

If you are implementing BMC Server Automation in a virtual environment, review the requirements and instructions outlined in Setting-up-BMC-Server-Automation-for-virtual-environments

Perl support

BMC Server Automation provides integrated support for the Perl script programming language. This section lists operating systems and corresponding Perl support.

The BMC Server Automation Perl module integrates with libnc, the core library for BMC Server Automation, which functions like a network-enabled version of libc. Because of this integration, you can use Perl scripts to perform functions on remote hosts (such as open, read, and write files) as long as those hosts are running RSCD agents.

When you install Network Shell on a platform that can support a BMC Server Automation Application Server, the Perl module of BMC Server Automation is automatically installed. The BMC Server Automation Perl module is compatible with the versions of Perl listed in the following table: 

BMC Decision Support for Server Automation requirements

This section describes the requirements for installing and using BMC Decision Support for Server Automation in the BMC Server Automation system.

• The version and service pack of BMC BladeLogic Decision Support for Server Automation used in your environment should be the same or higher than the version and service pack of BMC Server Automation that you are using. For a list of BMC Server Automation versions supported for use with BMC Decision Support for Server Automation, see BMC-Server-Automation-requirements in the BMC Decision Support for Server Automation documentation.
• The character set of the schema types for BMC BladeLogic Decision Support for Server Automation must match the character set of schema types for BMC Server Automation. For example, if the BMC Server Automation core database uses LATIN-1, the data warehouse must use the same character set or its subset character set. If the BMC Server Automation core database uses AL32UTF8, the data warehouse must use the same character set or its subset character set.
• BMC Decision Support for Server Automation does not support collation with case-sensitive database schema. If the BMC Server Automation database has collation with case-sensitive database schema, the database does not work with BMC Decision Support for Server Automation.
• The BMC Server Automation database password should not begin with an equal sign (=). If the password begins with an equal sign, installation of BMC BladeLogic Decision Support for Server Automation cannot proceed until the password is changed.
• If you modify the BMC Server Automation database details (for example: server name, SID, or password), you must change the BMC Decision Support for Server Automation site context to use the modified details. To change the site context, use the BMC Decision Support for Server Automation Console.  

HP-UX 11.11 patch requirements

HP-UX 11.11 requires the following patches before installing the agent on this platform:

• KRNG11I (Strong Random Number Generator)
• PHSS_39077 to prevent the daalinfo command from hanging. (Linker patch required by Java 6.0 runtime.)

Citrix patch requirements

To avoid JVM memory allocation issues, you must install a patch on Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 (32-bit) before installing the RCP client (BMC Server Automation Console) on that platform.
For information on obtaining and applying the patch, see the article on the Citrix Support site: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX115868.

Solaris 10.0 patch requirements

Solaris 10.0 requires Patch 120460-19 (or later) before you install the RCP client (BMC Server Automation Console) on that platform. The patch installs the latest Solaris gnome base libraries that the platform needs for remote display of the BMC Server Automation Console using XServer. For information about obtaining and applying the patch, see the Oracle Sun website.

Linux and Solaris Tuning Parameters

Most Linux and Solaris systems have fairly low settings for the number of files that a user can have open, as well as the number of processes that they can run.  These settings should be increased from the default values for the bladmin user.  The Application Server startup script will attempt to set an open file and process limit of 8192.  This requires that the operating system configuration be adjusted to allow these values.  For example, in Redhat Linux 5 you can add the following settings to the /etc/security/limits.conf file.

Restart the application server service to ensure that the new settings are picked up.

Third-party software

The following table lists the third-party software versions shipped with BMC BladeLogic Server Automation.

To browse and view details about the software applications discovered by BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping, see Browsing-discovered-software-applications.