This documentation supports an earlier version of BMC Helix IT Service Management on-premises deployment.To view the documentation for the latest version, select 23.3.04 from the Product version picker.

BMC Helix IT Service Management Deployment 21.3.10

Perform a fresh installation by deploying container images of BMC Helix Innovation Suite, including Action Request System, BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Helix CMDB, BMC Helix Digital Workplace, BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT, BMC Helix ITSM Insights, BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker, and other components.

Learn more about installation in the Deployment-overview.


Release notes and notices Updated 27 Apr 2025

Learn what’s new or changed for installation and deployment of BMC Helix Service Management 21.3.10, including new features, urgent issues, documentation updates, and fixes or patches. 

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Related topics

Action Request System Release notes and notices (part of BMC Helix Innovation Suite) 
BMC Helix Innovation Studio Release notes and notices (part of BMC Helix Innovation Suite) 
BMC Helix CMDB Release notes and notices 
BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT Release notes and notices
BMC Helix Single Sign-On Release notes and notices
BMC Helix IT Service Management Suite Release notes and notices
BMC Helix Service Request Management Release notes and notices
BMC Service Level Management Release notes and notices
BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting Release notes and notices

 

Date

Summary

Reference

March 27, 2025Flash for Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Ingress NGINXFix available for Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Ingress NGINX CVE-2025-1097, CVE-2025-1098, CVE-2025-24514, and CVE-2025-1974

September 5, 2023

Updates available in 21.3 patch 10:

  • Support for Kubernetes 1.25 and OpenShift 4.12
  • Support for Ingress controller 1.7.0 and Helm 3.11
  • Migration of container images to the Alpine operating system
  • Additional products available for on-premises installation

December 1, 2022

Updates available in 21.3 patch 6:

  • Updated support for Kubernetes and OpenShift
  • Support for self-signed and CA signed certificates
  • Updated support for Ingress controller
  • Automated setting up of BMC Deployment Engine

August 30, 2022

This patch contains functional and security defect fixes.

August 1, 2022

Updates available in 21.3 patch 5:

  • Support for Amazon EKS, GKE and OKE platforms
  • Rollback deployment
  • Updates to Fluent Bit deployment
  • Enhancements to Support Assistant tool

March 23, 2022

Updates available in 21.3 patch 4:

  • Enhancements to Support Assistant tool deployment
  • Support for deployment size templates

January 5, 2022

Enhancement available in this release:

Support BMC Helix ITSM Insights and BMC Helix Dashboards deployment

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The release notes in this documentation are specific to deploying BMC Helix Service Management and other components by using container images. For complete release notes, refer to the product documentation of the respective component.

 

 

Planning

Plan an installation based on recommended deployment architecture, best practices, sizing, and system requirements.

Installing

Install the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service management applications and perform initial system configuration.

Upgrading

Upgrade the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service management applications based on the latest system requirements and software.

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 BMC Helix Service Management containers.

Frequently asked questions about licenses, assistance, and subscription

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions about BMC Helix Service Management licenses, installation assistance, and education subscription.

How do I get a licence for the BMC Helix Service Management product?

You can obtain the license from the BMC Support Central site.

For information about how to obtain a license, see Obtaining-license-keys.

How do I get installation and migration assistance?

BMC Customer Success offers multiple Success Subscriptions to assist you.

See Success Subscriptions.

Does BMC offer any education subscriptions?

Yes. See BMC Education Subscription Services.

Frequently asked questions about sizing and system requirements

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions about sizing and system requirements to install BMC Helix Service Management.

Sizing requirements

I am unsure about the sizing of the BMC Helix Service Management on-premises platform. How do I get advice?

See Sizing-and-scalability-considerations.

Software requirements

Do I need separate servers for installing Git, Ansible and Jenkins?

No. You don't need separate servers for installing Git, Ansible, and Jenkins. You can install and set them up on a single server.

See Setting-up-BMC-Deployment-Engine.

Can I use Harbor and Jenkins without SSL certificates?

Yes. You can use Harbor and Jenkins without Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

For more information, see Setting-up-a-Harbor-repository-to-synchronize-container-images.


What is the difference between BMC Support Assistant tool and BMC Helix Logging?

BMC Support Assistant tool collects BMC Helix Innovation Suite application related logging whereas BMC Helix logging collects critical BMC Helix Innovation Suite and common services related information.

Is the zero downtime upgrade supported?

Yes. See Zero-downtime (ZDT) upgrade for BMC Helix Innovation Suite and applications

 in BMC Helix Innovation Studio documentation.

Can I reuse the same Jenkins server for an upgrade?

Yes. You can modify or create Jenkins pipelines.

Can I use a single BMC Deployment Engine for multiple deployments?

Yes. You can use a single BMC Deployment Engine for multiple deployments provided you update the kubeconfig and relevant parameters.

Important: We recommend dedicated BMC Deployment Engines for each BMC Helix Service Management instance.

Does Helix OnPrem support a single Helix Portal (Common Services) with ITSM and ITOM?

Yes, this is possible. For more information, contact BMC Support. 

Do I need to specify a separate database server hostname for BMC Helix Single Sign-On?

No. The deployment manager script deploys a PostgreSQL database and BMC Helix Single Sign-On Tomcat internally to the Kubernetes cluster.

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

You might encounter issues with unsupported versions. For information about the supported versions, see System-requirements.

Does BMC provide Docker files for each container image?

BMC does not provide a Docker manifest for the container images. You can synchronize the container images in BMC DTR to a local container repository.

See Setting-up-a-Harbor-repository-to-synchronize-container-images.

Will database dumps with application sample data be provided?

BMC provides the database dumps required for BMC Helix Service Management installation. However, database dumps of a sample application data are not provided.

Is the container and Kubernetes orchestration based on-premises deployment of BMC Helix Service Management supported on Windows?

BMC Helix Service Management containers use Linux operating system. The container host systems must have Linux operating system as the kernel is shared between the host and container.

It is theoretically possible to run a Linux virtual machine on a Windows host and deploy Kubernetes across the virtual machine and run Linux containers. However, BMC does not recommend such deployment architecture and does not provide deployment sizing guidelines for such configurations.

Does the database tier in the BMC Helix Service Management deployment runs in a container?

No. The database tier in the BMC Helix Service Management deployment does not run in a container.

What are the formats or standards used by the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and service Management applications containers?

BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and Service Management application containers are based on Docker and they leverage Kubernetes orchestration layer.

After one deployment, can BMC Deployment Engine be reused for the next deployment?

Yes. The same Deployment Engine setup (Jenkins) can be used to deploy different environments of the same version, such as Dev, QA, and production.

For more information, see Setting-up-the-deployment-input-configuration-file.

Is it enough to set up a single Deployment engine, which will be applicable to both non production and production deployment?

Yes. The same Deployment Engine setup (Jenkins) can be used to deploy multiple instances of the same version.

For more information, see Setting-up-the-deployment-input-configuration-file.

Should the deployment engine be kept after the initial deployment is done? Will it be used for further upgrade of Helix Innovation Suite?

Yes, The same Deployment Engine setup ( Jenkins) can be used to deploy patches and updates; hence may be retained or recreated when needed.

For more information, see Setting-up-the-deployment-input-configuration-file.

Where do I use the database dump artifacts downloaded from the EPD site?

If you decide not to use PostgreSQL database, you must import either the Microsoft SQL or Oracle database dumps before you begin the deployment.

See Setting-up-a-Microsoft-SQL-Server-database and Setting-up-an-Oracle-database.

Kubernetes cluster requirements

Do I have Horizontal Pod Autoscaling for both platform services and BMC Helix Innovation Suite?

No. Horizontal Pod Autoscaling is supported only for platform services.

Where will the data lake components such as Kafka, Elasticsearch, and Redis be installed?

The storage class for the data lake components is external to the cluster.

How can I increase the number of containers or pods?

You can increase the number of containers by scaling the Kubernetes cluster.

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

Nginx Ingress controller is used for load balancing services in Kubernetes whereas a network load balancer is used to distribute the load of incoming requests.


Network requirements

What types of load balancers are supported?

All load balancers that meet the following requirements are supported:

  • SSL pass-through to offload at the Ingress Controller
  • Allow X-Forwarded- Headers Upstream of Ingress
  • Unaltered response redirects
Are application DNS aliases required before running installation?

Yes. All DNS aliases should be set up before the installation and resolved to the network load balancer.

Frequently asked questions about environment security

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions about BMC Helix Service Management environment security.

Should I update the default passwords after installation?

BMC recommends to update the default passwords for the products, virtual machines, and databases to prevent any security issues. 

Do any of the logs contain sensitive, personal, or tax related data?

BMC does not allow any personal information to be stored in the logs.

Does BMC support a Key Management System?

No. BMC does not support a Key Management System.

Are the container images secure and scanned?

BMC uses the base images which are scanned regularly. BMC ensures that a high level of security is met.

Does the BMC Helix Service Management installation uses any ports numbers below 1024?

BMC Helix Service Management installation does not use any ports numbers below 1024 except port 443. Port 443 is used for HTTPS.

Do the pods use configmaps and secrets to pass sensitive parameters such as credentials or passwords?

Yes. The pods use configmaps and secrets to pass sensitive parameters such as credentials or passwords.

Frequently asked questions about BMC Helix Service Management components

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions about BMC Helix Service Management components.

Is BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting also containerized?

Yes. You can install BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting if you have opted for Smart Reporting extended support.

For more information, see Downloading-the-installation-files.

Are AR System, BMC Helix Innovation Studio, and BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog all merged into one instance, so that only 1 instead of 3 platform installations are necessary and all applications run on this one platform instance?

Yes. All Service Management applications run on the BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform.

For more information, see Downloading-the-installation-files.

Is it mandatory that BMC Helix Innovation Suite, BMC Helix Platform, BMC Helix Logging must be bundled together? For example, is it possible to setup a single BMC Helix Platform or BMC Helix Logging to support multiple BMC Helix Innovation Suite?

Yes. Multiple BMC Helix ITSM and Helix Platform namespaces can use same Helix Logging Namespace. Only one helix logging namespace is recommended per cluster.

For more information, see Setting-up-the-installation-environment.

Can we separately restart the AR Server, Mid-Tier and other components?

AR server, FTS server (Platform Rank server), mid-tier, and so on are all separate services.

To trigger rolling restart, you must change the value of the triggerUpgrade variable to any value of your choice that triggers restart. This variable is exposed in the values.yaml file and is referred in various specs, such as statefulset or deployment.

How to form a server group for ITSM?

All containers are part of the same server group. You don’t have to anything specific to make them part of the server group.

How to identify the individual components installed in different worker nodes?

You can know which pod is running in the namespace by using one of the following ways:

  • If you are consuming the Prometheus metrics from Kubernetes, you can scrape the metrics to know which pod is running in the namespace.

  • You can run the following command that will list the pods you have and the worker nodes that are running.

    kubectl -n <namespace> get po -o wide
How to rank the operations within ITSM?

The ranking is governed through AR system operations ranking. On startup, container bootstrap script only assigns default ranking for the first time pod comes up. From that point on, the ranking changes are retained.

Is there an option to shutdown and start the entire ITSM application?

If you scale down all the pods to zero, the ITSM application will stop.

Can I scale up and scale down the application pods and nodes based on the utilization?

Auto scaling is not supported currently for both pods and nodes. 

What components are covered during the BMC Helix Service Management upgrade?

The BMC Helix Service Management upgrade includes the latest patches for the following components:  

  • BMC Helix ITSM 
  • BMC Service Level Management 
  • BMC Service Request Management 
  • Mid-Tier (AR System) 
  • BMC CMDB 
  • BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting 
  • BMC Helix Digital Workplace Basic 
  • BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced 
  • BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog 
  • BMC Live Chat 
  • BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT 

If you are using BMC Helix Innovation Suite or applications based on it, then the upgrade also includes: 

  • BMC Helix Innovation Studio 
  • BMC Helix Business Workflows  
  • BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker 

  • BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting for these BMC Helix Innovation Suite components

    Important

    You can install BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting if you have opted for Smart Reporting extended support.

Single applications or modules are not upgraded separately during the upgrade. As part of the upgrade, all components are moved to a single instance of BMC Helix Service Management.  

Is BMC changing the APIs?

BMC has not made any changes to the existing APIs. Any code that you have built on previously existing APIs should continue to work in the new release.  

There are minor authentication related changes to the APIs. For more information on the authentication related changes, see the following links:

Access and authentication for the REST API and Overview of the REST API in Action Request System documentation.

We have added some new, simplified REST APIs for specific ITSM objects, such as incidents, problems, change requests.

See Overview of the simplified REST API in BMC Helix ITSM documentation.

Will my customized OOTB reports in Smart Reporting be available and working after an upgrade?

Yes. We recommend not changing the OOTB (out-of-the-box) reports provided in BMC Helix ITSM: Smart Reporting. Always make a copy of the OOTB reports and then make the necessary changes. If you followed this approach, your reports would continue to work. If you modified the OOTB reports, they would not work post upgrade. Please make sure you create copies of all modified OOTB report before the upgrade starts.

Related spaces

BMC Helix Innovation Suite platform and IT Service Management documentation

BMC Helix Data Manager documentation

BMC Helix IT Operations Management deployment documentation

AR System

21.05 21.3 22.1

BMC Helix Innovation Studio

21.02 21.05 21.3 22.1

BMC Helix ITSM

21.05 21.3 22.1 23.3 25.1







 

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