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BMC Helix IT Operations Management deployment 23.4.00

BMC Helix IT Operations Management (BMC Helix ITOM) deployment is the process of managing the provisioning, capacity, cost, performance, security, and availability of infrastructure and services. By using container images, you can perform a fresh deployment of BMC Helix IT Operations Management in your on-premises environment.

Learn more about installation in the Deployment-overview.

Release notes and notices Updated 27 Nov 2024

Learn what’s new or changed for the installation and deployment of BMC Helix IT Operations Management (BMC Helix ITOM), including new features, urgent issues, documentation updates, and fixes or patches. 

The release notes in this documentation are specific to the installation and upgrade of BMC Helix IT Operations Management. For complete release notes, refer to the product documentation of the respective component.

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Known-and-corrected-issues

Downloading-the-deployment-managerBMC Helix Operations Management Release notes and notices

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations Release notes and notices
Support-information


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Planning

As an IT architect or system administrator, you can plan your fresh deployment of BMC Helix IT Operations Management and choose the best deployment method. Plan your environment and pre-deployment activities.

Deploying

As a system administrator, prepare for the deployment of BMC Helix IT Operations Management by using containers and perform the post-deployment tasks.

Administering

As a system administrator, use the tctl utility to administer and manage BMC Helix IT Operations Management.

Troubleshooting

Resolve common issues or errors, review logs, or contact Support.
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FAQs

Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions about the BMC Helix IT Operations Management containers.

BMC Helix Operations Management


Is it possible to export BMC Helix Operations Management policies to a file?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


Can we import BMC Helix Operations Management policies from a file?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


Can we generate a PATROL Agent Report of all agents BHOM tenant in csv file format?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


Device Report generated of BMC Helix Operations Management tenant to csv ?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


Can we test connectivity between a host and the target BHOM tenant?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


Can we generate a solution deployment report detailing all solutions and versions deployed to PATROL Agents that match the given regex pattern?

Yes, please contact BMC Support.


How to move PATROL Agents from one Helix instance to another?

See, Migrating PATROL Agents from TSOM to BHOM and Migrating PATROL Agents in the BMC PATROL Agent for BMC Helix Operations Management documentation.


What are the supported versions of PATROL Agents for BHOM?

See, BMC PATROL Agent documentation.


Where are details for Monitoring Solutions for BMC Helix Operations Management?

See, Monitoring solutions in BMC Helix Operations Management in the BMC Infrastructure Management-PATROL Repository documentation.


What are the supported versions of the Infrastructure Components?

See, System-requirements.


Does BMC Helix support Forward Proxy for PATROL Agents?

Yes, we have documented an example using Squid. However you can utilize your own forward proxy. Discuss it with your Network Administrator.

For more information, see Configuring a Squid proxy server in the BMC PATROL Agent for BMC Helix Operations Management documentation.


Certificates


Can we use self-signed or custom CA certificates?

Yes, for more information see Using-custom-CA-signed-certificates.


How do I get a Certificate Authority (CA) signed certificate for load balancer configuration?
  1. Create a certificate signing request (csr) file by using OpenSSL.
  2. Submit the the file < your.domain.com >.csr to your CA and request for signed certificate.
  3. Import the CA's reply.

Disaster recovery


How can I define a URL for the MinIO on my standby site for replication when the MinIO on my primary and standby sites is deployed with the same URL?

Perform the following steps on the standby site:

  1. To get the MinIO Ingress rule, run the following command:

    kubectl -n <namespace> get ing | grep ^minio

    <namespace> is the namespace where you deployed BMC Helix ITOM.
    Sample output:

    # kubectl -n ITOM-namespace get ing | grep ^minio
    minio                                                  <none>   serta-minio.adeonprem.bmc.com       172.20.112.175                      80      20d
    minio-api                                              <none>   serta-minio-api.adeonprem.bmc.com   172.20.112.175                      80      20d
    #
  2. Create new MinIO Ingress rules for minio and minio-api.
    For example:  
    serta-minio-India.adeonprem.bmc.com 
    serta-minio-India-api.adeonprem.bmc.com
  3. Use new MinIO Ingress rules to define the URL for the MinIO on the secondary site for replication.

Enablement


Does BMC offer installation and migration assistance?

Yes, for more information see Success Subscriptions.


Does BMC offer Education subscriptions for on-premises deployments?

Yes, see BMC Education Subscription Services, BMC Helix On-Premises IT Operations Management Container Deployment: Essential Subscription, and BMC Helix On-Premises IT Service Management Container Deployment: Essential Subscription

Health check


How do I obtain the ITOM and Helix Portal (Common Services) Health Check Tool?

See, BMC Helix onprem installation health check tool.

Kubernetes


How is high availability achieved?

High availability is achieved through Kubernetes, which uses virtual services to load balance application pods across the cluster.

High availability is enabled for all but the compact sized deployments using multiple pods for each service.

For more information about system usage profiles, see Sizing-and-scalability-considerations.


What is the difference between an Nginx ingress controller (internal to the cluster) and a network load balancer (external to the cluster)?

The Nginx Ingress controller is used to route requests to the appropriate services and pods within the cluster. Network load balancing is used to distribute the load of incoming requests across multiple nodes.


Do the container images of the application provide a liveliness probe and a readiness probe?

Where appropriate both readiness and liveness probes are defined in BMC images.


Does BMC support any other Ingress controllers other than Ingress NGINX?

No, currently only Ingress NGINX is supported.


How are the logs managed?

BMC Helix Logging is not available if you install BMC Helix ITOM version 23.2.02 or upgrade to BMC Helix ITOM 23.2.02 from an earlier version.
For an alternate method to view logs, see Why is Helix Logging not available in ITOM Deployment version 23.2.02?.


Does the deployment use CI/CD pipelines?

BMC provides deployment software automation and does not support Webhooks or CI/CD pipelines.


Does BMC use "latest" tags in container images?

BMC does not use "latest" tags and uses versions wherever possible.


Does the container registry require access to the internet?

BMC software supports air-gapped deployments from a local registry which has been synchronized with the BMC containers.bmc.com.

For more information, see Setting-up-a-Harbor-registry-in-an-air-gapped-environment-and-synchronizing-it-with-BMC-DTR.


Does BMC set limits in the deployment, the DeploymentConfig, the StatefulSet, or the respective Kubernetes object used?

We set default requests and limits for all services. 

Migration


Can we migrate TSOM configurations to BMC Helix Operations Management?

Yes, seeConverting PATROL Agent Pconfig rules to Policy ManagmentMigrating TSOM Infrastructure Policies to BHOM with the bhompolicymigratorMigrating PATROL Agents from TSOM to BHOMManaging BHOM with the bhomadmin toolkit


Can we migrate TSOM Blackout Policies to BMC Helix Operations Management Blackout Policies?

Yes, you must to do it manually.

Network


Are application DNS aliases required before running installation?

Yes, all DNS aliases must be set up before the installation and should resolve to the network load balancer.

For more information, see Load-balancer-requirements.


What type of load balancers has BMC tested?

For local testing purposes, we have used an F5 load balancer. 
You can use your existing vendor-specific load balancer. You must make sure the DNS resolution and lookups are working fine. 

For more information, see Load-balancer-requirements.


Is Static IP mandatory for the common services (ADE platform)?

The Static IP is a requirement for the common services and not for BMC Discovery. 
To get Static IP reach out to the in-house IT team to generate or assign for the environment.

The IP requirements are for the load balancer and the DNS. If we have a Static IP then making and maintaining configuration changes becomes less cumbersome when compared to maintaining a DHCP setup. 


What ports must be enabled for the Helix Platform?

See, Network-ports.


What firewall settings are required?

See, Network-ports. 

On-premises deployment


Where can I find the important configuration files for on-premises deployments?

See, Configuration-file-settings.


Where can I find sample configuration files for BMC Helix Operations Management?

See, Example-configuration-files-for-BMC-Helix-Operations-Management.


Where can I find sample configuration files for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization?

See, Example-configuration-files-for-BMC-Helix-Continuous-Optimization.


Where can I find sample configuration files for BMC Helix Intelligent Automation?

See, Example-configuration-files-for-BMC-Helix-Intelligent-Automation.


Does BMC Helix on-premises support a single Helix Portal (Common Services) with ITSM and ITOM?

Yes, we do support a single Helix portal with BMC Helix ITSM and BMC Helix ITOM.

Please raise a case with BMC Support to help you confirm requirements.

Security


Should I update the default passwords after installation?

We recommend that you update default passwords for VMs, databases, and products to be compliant with your security policy to prevent any security issues. 


Does BMC perform security scans on their images before they release?

Yes, we do. However, if you find any subsequent security vulnerabilities, please raise a case with BMC support.


Do containers have a default users?

We use our own canonical container images which use a bmcuser in the majority of cases. We will not be able to align with the base container images used by customers as these can vary widely.

For data layer services (such as Kafka, Postgres, and ElasticSearch), we use Community Edition containers which include all default users and libraries. We might amend these images if we identify security exceptions but otherwise, they are unaltered.


Sizing


I am unsure about the sizing of the Helix on-premise platform. How do I get advice?

See, Sizing-and-scalability-considerations.

Software


How do I obtain access to the on-premises software?

Please contact BMC Account Manager.


How do I download the deployment manager and container images?

See, Downloading-the-deployment-manager.


Does BMC Helix ITOM utilize Jenkins to deploy the product?

No, BMC Helix ITOM does not utilize Jenkins to deploy the product.


Does BMC provide Docker files for each container image?

No, we do not  provide a Docker manifest for container images.


Can I use latest versions software for Kubernetes, Helm, and Docker?

Supported versions are detailed in the product documentation. You many encounter issues with unsupported versions.



Related spaces

This topic provides a list of spaces related to BMC Helix IT Operations Management.

BMC Helix Platform spaces

BMC Helix Portal

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BMC Helix AIOps

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BMC Helix Continuous Optimization

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BMC Helix Dashboards

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BMC Helix Intelligent Automation

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BMC Helix Operations Management

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