Service update

As a part of your active BMC Helix subscription service, monthly service updates containing patches, enhancements, and new features are deployed to your Development environment first, then QA, and finally Production. See the Enhancements-and-patches corresponding to your subscription services for an overview of what has been released. For information on the maintenance schedules, see Maintenance Windows page. 

BMC Helix supports service update with zero downtime (ZDT), unless otherwise stated on your service update email notification. The service update is pushed in the form of automated rollouts to your environments with zero downtime. 

BMC performs a service update to the following services so that you can access the latest features and fixes:

  • IT Service Management
  • IT Operations Management
  • Common Services

Related topics

Enhancements-and-patches

BMC-Helix-Upgrade-policy

FAQ

Important for migration

  • If you are migrating from on-premises to Helix, make sure to add your assigned BMC Professional Services and partner representatives as Technical Contact types in Support Central > Contact List utility. This way, your Professional Services and partner representatives receive important BMC change and service update notifications directly.  

  • We recommend applying the latest update before a migration project goes live. The updates are best applied after the UAT cycle and before the final migration activities start.

Service update overview

The entire service update process spans across a few days and is broadly divided into the following stages:

ZDT_Overview.png

Stage

Description

Planning the service update

During this stage, BMC will inform you about the service update process through email notifications. BMC plans the service update and shares a schedule with you.

The service update schedules are shared through email notifications 7 days prior to the update of your nonproduction environments and 21 days prior to the update of your production environment. The service update schedule will be visible to you on the Change calendar 48 hours before the start of the update. 

Updating the Development environment

A full stack update of your Development environment is performed during this stage. It takes about 24 hours to update the Development environment. During this time, your environment might be unavailable for 30 minutes throughout the update window.

After the update, basic sanity checks (such as accessibility of URLs, log in and log out operations) are performed and a completion notification is sent to you.

BMC sets aside a rest period of one week before it begins updating your QA environment. You can use this time to test your environment and reach out to the BMC Support team if you have any issues. 
For example, after BMC updates your Development environment, you have one week to test your Development environment before BMC begins the update of your QA environment.

Updating the QA environment

A full stack update of your QA environment is performed during this stage. It takes about 24 hours to update the QA environment. During this time, your environment might be unavailable for 30 minutes throughout the update window.

After the update, basic sanity checks (such as accessibility of URLs, log in and log out operations) are performed and a completion notification is sent to you.

BMC sets aside a rest period of two weeks before it begins updating your Production environment. You can use this time to test your environment and reach out to the BMC Support team if you have any issues. 
For example, after BMC updates your QA environment, you have two weeks to test your QA environment before BMC begins the update of your Production environment.

Updating the Production environment

A full stack update of your Production environment is performed during this stage. It takes about 24 hours to update the Production environment. However, based on the size and complexity of your environment, it might require more than 24 hours to update your Production environment. Based on the observations made while updating your Development and QA environments, BMC will notify you of the time required to update your Production environment.
During the update window, your environment will be fully available.

After the update, basic sanity checks (such as accessibility of URLs, log in and log out operations) are performed and a completion notification is sent to you.

You can test your environment and reach out to the BMC Support team if you have any issues.

Warning

During the update window, you can perform all end-user operations. However, administrator operations, including metadata operations, are not allowed.
For more information, see Zero-downtime-upgrade-for-BMC-Helix-Innovation-Suite-and-applications.

If you observe any application errors during the update window, perform the following workarounds :

  • Refresh your browser session and retry the operation.
  • Log out of the application, log in again, and then retry the operation.

If you still encounter issues, reach out to the BMC Support team.


 Request to opt out of a scheduled service update

BMC does not recommend that you to opt out of a BMC Helix Service Management scheduled service update. However, due to some reason, if you choose to opt out of the scheduled update, you are at a risk of missing the latest features and important security and performance fixes. Operations Management subscription services like BMC Helix Operations Management, BMC Helix Continuous Optimization, BMC Helix Discovery, BMC Helix Automation Console are not subject to opt-outs for scheduled service updates. 

The process to opt out of a scheduled service update is as follows:

  • Use the Support Central to submit a support case with valid reasons for opting out. You must submit a support case at least four calendar days before the start of the scheduled service update.
  • BMC will review your case internally and provide justification. If any additional information is needed, BMC will reach out to you through the support case.
  • BMC will notify you about the approval or denial of your opt-out request.

Important

The opt outs are case specific; that is, each approved opt out applies only to that particular case or the service update cycle. You will be automatically included in the next service update cycle. 

Requesting a service update

BMC plans, schedules, and periodically updates your environments. The updates are pushed in the form of automated rollouts to your environments with zero downtime. However, you could also request for an update. The following image shows the process to request a service update:

ZDT_ReqUpgrade.png

For more information about submitting a request for change (RFC), see Change-documentation.

 

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