BMC Helix Data Manager Overview

If you want to use BMC products in a new or an upgraded system, you must migrate your data accurately and quickly. BMC Helix Data Manager is a utility that helps the administrators to migrate data into a new system. BMC Helix Data Manager offers unparalleled speed and reliable data migration capabilities, so you can rapidly upgrade to the latest version of the supported BMC products, seamlessly migrate to the cloud, or manage ITSM as a service.

BMC Helix Data Manager includes preconfigured Migration Packs for the major ITSM releases. You can modify these Packs to meet the needs of your application, project, and business. Helpful data mapping tools like built-in transformations and conditional logic are also available.

With BMC Helix Data Manager, you can migrate data from these sources:

• BMC Helix ITSM
• BMC Helix Innovation Suite
• BMC Digital Workplace Catalog
• Any relational database, like Smart IT

The most common BMC Helix Data Manager use case is to perform an upgrade data migration for BMC Helix ITSM by using the Staged Upgrade methodology. This upgrade involves migrating all data from BMC Helix ITSM to a new installation of the latest BMC Helix ITSM.

Components of BMC Helix Data Manager include:

• Workbench - Web user interface for the BMC Helix Data Manager application, hosted on an embedded Tomcat Java Servlet Engine. Use Workbench to manage every aspect of data migration configuration, including data mappings, data sets, full-migration control, real-time monitoring and exception management. The Workbench does not perform processor-heavy activities that are delegated to BMC Helix Data Manager Engine.
• Repository - Persistent storage of all BMC Helix Data Manager data in a PostgreSQL relational database.
• Engine - Component that manages the execution of intensive processing activities, including discovery, analysis, and data migration. Polls the repository for actions that users submit through the BMC Helix Data Manager Workbench.

You can connect one or more BMC Helix Data Manager Engine installations to a single BMC Helix Data Manager Repository and control them from the BMC Helix Data Manager Workbench. Discovery and data migration operations are performed at the database layer. Optionally, BMC Helix Data Manager can connect to AR System servers to build AR System workflows.

Data migration scenarios

BMC Helix Data Manager supports a variety of data migration scenarios for the BMC Helix ITSM application, including:

• Migrate to BMC Helix cloud—Migrating a customer from an on-premises environment to BMC Helix Cloud.
• Upgrade—Directly migrating an ITSM system to the latest version without needing to pass through intermediate versions (for example, 7.6.04 to 20.08).
• Staggered Upgrade—Migrating waves of customers at a time in large multitenant systems. This step removes the need to gain agreement for all customers to upgrade simultaneously.
• Archiving—Moving data to alternative locations such as near-line storage (on another database) or offline (to files) because, over a period of time, the amount of data stored in BMC Helix ITSM increases and affects performance.
• Consolidation—Merging one or more ITSM environments into a single environment.
• Segregation—Moving one or more customers that are on a multitenant platform to a separate system along with their live and historical data.
• Onboarding—Adding new customers with traditional data load spreadsheets and then using BMC Helix Data Manager to move to QA and production systems without needing to revise and reload the spreadsheets multiple times.
• Offboarding—Removing an ITSM company from a multitenant environment. BMC Helix Data Manager identifies, backs up, and deletes an entire customer dataset.
• Environment Synchronization—Integrating non production environments, ensuring a quality development-to-production process without disrupting in-flight projects.

Benefits of BMC Helix Data Manager

Consolidate data with the powerful data migration capabilities of BMC Helix Data Manager by:

• Moving subsets of data. For example, for BMC Helix ITSM, you can move the following data:
  • Foundation data
  • Closed tickets
  • Open tickets
  • Data changed since the last synchronization
• Moving an individual company or companies between systems
• Transforming data during data migration
  • Changes all product or operational categorization data in all locations
  • Converts shared configuration data to company-specific data
  • Discovers and transforms references in data that refer to a specific environment
• Migrating global data between systems
• Incrementally migrating all changes, including deletions, between systems (Deletions are performed safely, ensuring that data belonging to companies outside the scope of migration are not affected.)
• Safely transforming unique identifiers
  • Ensures that no clashes occur with unique identifiers in the target system
  • Preserves referential integrity of the data
• Safely removing large data volumes
• Identifying customizations and differences in the data model between two systems
• Backing up and restoring data specific to an environment (for example, license information)
• Purging environment-specific data

All the BMC Helix Data Manager capabilities work directly at the database tier resulting in fast transformation. Additionally, BMC Helix Data Manager does not require you to start the AR System server, which could risk invalid system references and cause system integrity issues if AR System is started or is running during the migration process.

BMC Helix Data Manager is a data migration tool designed to support consolidation of the data. However, the overall process of consolidating environments requires careful management of a range of complex technical activities, not all of which are within the scope of data migration.

Learn more

We recommend that you complete the BMC Helix Data Manager 21.x: Fundamentals Migrating training course to successfully use BMC Helix Data Manager.

Learn more