Operations


The BMC SaaS Operations team manages all operational aspects of the service, from activation to decommissioning. The following table describes key areas of responsibility:


Function

Description

Service activation focuses on the initial setup and configuration of your Helix environments so that you can begin using your service.

BMC's data centers are top-tier data centers that are staffed and monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Monitoring includes electrical, environmental, and backup systems. Primary data centers are backed up by a geographically-dispersed data center for disaster recovery purposes.

Operational and enhancement services included with your BMC Helix subscription are referred to as Lifecycle Requests. These services are fulfilled upon request by the BMC SaaS Operations team.

BMC allows unlimited application customizations to your applications, assuming best-practice design is used. Ongoing maintenance of customizations is the responsibility of the customer.

Just before production cutover, the BMC SaaS Operations team conducts an extensive go-live assessment to evaluate production system parameters. Adjustments are made to the system if necessary.

Led by its Security Operations Center (SOC), BMC uses a multilayered approach to protect your data, constantly monitoring and improving applications, systems, and processes. 

Responding to incidents affecting your production system and restoring your service to normal levels is the number one priority of BMC SaaS Operations. Reporting on a service disruption involves an analysis of the issue, followed by a Request for Outage report.

The BMC Helix change management process involves close control of system changes throughout their lifecycle to ensure minimum disruption to supporting services.

BMC manages all patching and maintenance of the underlying infrastructure of the BMC Helix services.

BMC schedules and performs updates and patches per its published upgrade policy. Some services are updated per a schedule set by BMC SaaS Operations; others are by request.

Standard maintenance windows are published in advance and are typically outside of normal business hours for the region. Reminders are sent at least seven days before maintenance occurs for non-production systems and at least 21 days before maintenance occurs for production systems. Standard production monthly maintenance windows are a maximum of four hours in duration, with a goal of zero downtime. While most maintenance will not require downtime, infrastructure and common service updates might require server restarts within this window.

BMC data handling includes everything from data backup and retention schedules to archives to final data exports.

BMC provides continual auditing of OS security logs and application logs, to proactively assess system activity.

The BMC Information Technology Contingency Plan addresses actions required by BMC in the event of a disaster that impacts a customer’s primary service location. This plan is tested regularly. BMC offers two options for disaster recovery to meet the recovery point and recovery time objectives.

Service decommissioning is provided when a customer's service terminates or expires. In such case, BMC SaaS Operations provides a data backup file in a comma-separated values (.csv) format or provides a database backup file before permanent deletion of the data occurs.

 

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