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Zero-downtime upgrade for BMC Helix Innovation Suite and applications

BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service management applications such as BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Helix Digital Workplace, BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, and BMC Helix Business Workflows support zero-downtime upgrade.

During an upgrade, a notification message appears in the BMC Helix Innovation Studio to inform you that the upgrade is in progress.

Upgrade in progress.png

Zero-downtime upgrade makes sure there is no downtime for your production system when BMC performs upgrade of your platform and applications. However, you might observe some issues intermittently, and you should avoid certain operations during the zero downtime upgrade.

Related topics

Known-and-corrected-issues

Operations to be avoided before or during a zero-downtime upgrade

To ensure successful and smooth zero-downtime upgrade,​​​​​ make sure you avoid the following operations:

Components

Operations to be avoided

BMC Remedy AR Server
  • Creating new forms and applications. 
  • Structural changes to forms or metadata. For example, importing forms from newer to older versions.
  • Cache replication or server restart.
  • Workflow changes not handled gracefully. For example, auto-reconciliation is not completed before platform restarts.
  • Security policy changes like updating CSP headers, removing policies without considering active user sessions.
  • Removing public permissions before all components are upgraded
  • Removing or renaming REST endpoints.
  • Deletion of system data, like deletion of licenses. 
  • Converting existing activelink actions (SQL/run process) to non-compatible action types. 
  • Changing the order of activelink actions or the number of columns queried. 
  • Changing join form members for an existing form/record definition. 
  • Deleting metadata objects (Forms, IS Rules, AR Workflow, instead disable them. 
  • Using field/vui IDs in customer range. 
  • Changing optional fields to display-only fields. 
  • Deleting or adding new fields on a form or a record definition.
  • Renaming field names or changing field ID that is delivered by BMC.
  • Removing or renaming REST API endpoints or fields.
  • Changing the meaning of an API field; instead introduce a new field.
  • Assuming client and server are updated simultaneously.
  • Exposing content package from the new server to the old server without compatibility checks.
  • Changing CCS property before all pods/components are restarted.

BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform, BMC Helix Innovation Studio applications, and BMC Helix ITSM applications

  • Performing any administrative operations.
  • Deploying and undeploying applications or libraries.
  • Creating any approval rules or process or changing any approval configuration.
  • Running any utility that performs administrative operations.
  • Changing configuration settings by using the Centralized Configuration console.
  • Restarting the servers.
  • Performing any Action Request System administrative functions.
  • Performing Server Information configurations any time during the upgrade process.
  • Making any ranking changes.
  • Creating any AR Object Workflows by using Service Level management (SLM) or Business Rule Engine.
  • Using any connection that uses the TCP port such as updating forms, escalations, active links, and other objects in Developer Studio.

BMC Helix ITSM Foundation data

  • Changing Foundation data and onboarding of any user, group, or company.

Mid Tier

  • Preloading or synchronization of Mid Tier cache.
  • Manually restarting Mid Tier.
  • Updating authenticator settings before all components are ready.

BMC Helix CMDB

  • Enabling or disabling any features and any configurations.
  • Performing BMC Helix CMDB administrative operations.
  • Creation index or changing constraint on large tables.
  • Adding unique indexes on existing fields that already contains duplicate data.
  • Performing long transactions that hold exclusive database locks during upgrades.

BMC Helix Innovation Studio

  • Accessing the BMC Helix Innovation Studio Workspace tab as an administrator useser.
  • Accessing the pages in the Administration tab of BMC Helix Innovation Studio.
  • Creating and modifying the following definitions in BMC Helix Innovation Studio:
    • Records, Views, Processes, Rules
    • Associations, Named lists
    • Events, Event statistics, Web APIs
    • Documents 
    • Chatbots
    • Administration configurations
  • Running a process in the Manage processes page
  • Exposing IS process for customization; instead provide hooks.

BMC Helix Business Workflows

  • Configuring the following tasks:
    • Case Template Configuration changes that involve edits to dynamic data and task flow process change (Create, Update)
    • Task Template Configuration changes that involve edits to dynamic data and automated task process change (Create, Update)
  • Creating and editing an email custom process in an email configuration
  • Editing and copying a line of business view configuration

BMC Helix Digital Workplace

  • Accessing approval records, Service Request Definition (SRD) and SB approvals in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
  • Creating records with incorrect license counts 

BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker

Changing the connector settings in BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker configuration

BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT

  • Refreshing server cache and metadata
  • Performing any customization
  • Restarting Smart IT during the entire upgrade process

BMC Service Request Management

  • Creating BMC Service Request Management objects such as processes
  • Importing and exporting Service Request Definitions
Warning

Important

You can continue with the transactional user operations during the platform and applications upgrade such as creating tickets, creating tickets through REST APIs, searching tickets, and searching knowledge articles.

Best practices for zero-downtime upgrade 

Following are the best practices to follow for zero-downtime upgrade:

Pre-upgrade or pre-freeze
  • Learn upgrade pipelines and ZDT impacts.
  • Ensure backward compatibility.
  • Anticipate breaking changes due to new features and plan for such scenarios.
  • Validate upgrades in a staging environment before production.
During upgrade
  • Document all ZDT impacts and fixes for handover. 
  • Introduce structural changes via first-class form attributes.
  • Provide hooks for customization rather than exposing IS processes.
  • Use default values when adding new required fields to forms or record definitions.
  • Ensure API changes are backward compatible. 
  • Communicate upgrade status and ZDT impacts to all stakeholders. 
  • Review upgrade outcomes and update best practices for future upgrades.
Post upgrade
  • Monitor and track ZDT cases, go-live blockers, and post-production fixes.
  • Gracefully handle workflow and metadata changes. 

Limitations and cautions

You might encounter the following issues while an upgrade is in progress:

  • Network connections with AR System server might not wthatrk for some time.
  • You might experience slow performance.
  • You might observe the following issues intermittently once during platform restart for a short duration of time:
    • Session timeouts
    • UI errors
    • RSSO authentication failed error
    • 502 Bad Gateway
    • Invalid credentials
    • HTTP ERROR 404 Not Found

  • For on-premises customers, the current Mid Tier and Smart IT sessions will be disconnected when the Mid Tier and Smart IT pods restart.

    For SaaS subscribers, the current Mid Tier and Smart IT sessions will be disconnected when the Mid Tier and Smart IT pods restart if you are upgrading BMC Helix Innovation Suite from a version earlier than 23.3.03 hotfix 1.

If you experience these issues, you can perform a refresh or login to the system and retry the operation after some time.

Upgrading custom code-based applications built on BMC Helix Innovation Studio

Starting with BMC Helix Innovation Suite 25.2 version, applications running on BMC Helix Innovation Studio earlier than 21.02 versions and built on the deprecated AngularJS library will no longer be supported. To ensure continued access, you must update these applications to the latest BMC Helix Innovation Suite version. 
Version 25.2 includes upgraded UI elements and third-party library updates, which might cause issues for custom-coded applications built on BMC Helix Innovation Studio. All custom-coded libraries must be rebuilt with the latest SDK before upgrading to BMC Helix Innovation Suite version 25.2 to avoid these issues.

For more information about preparing custom-coded applications for upgrade, see Preparing custom-coded applications for upgrade.

 

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BMC Helix Innovation Suite 26.1