Deploy BMC Helix Service Management in a multitenant BMC Helix Platform environment
Scenarios
An organization wants to install multiple BMC Helix Service Management systems in their on-premises environment. A typical deployment of BMC Helix Service Management includes a dedicated BMC Helix Platform. The organization decides to use a multitenant BMC Helix Platform to reduce infrastructure costs. A system administrator in the organization can use the BMC Helix Platform multitenancy feature in the following scenarios:
Service providers with multiple customers sharing one BMC Helix Platform
A service provider organization wants to install BMC Helix Service Management for three of their customers. A system administrator creates a shared cluster to host the production environments on the same BMC Helix Platform services. The administrator creates three BMC Helix Platform tenants, Tenant 1, Tenant 2, and Tenant 3 by using the tctl utility. The tctl utility uses tctl commands to manage tenant services. The administrator then installs BMC Helix Service Management for each tenant by using the deployment pipelines.
Data segregation and access are enforced. Data for each tenant in the BMC Helix Platform is not visible to other tenants. The logging data stored in Elasticsearch can be filtered by the tenant, but is not segregated.
This configuration is suitable where customers of the service provider do not have access to the Kubernetes administration functions.
The following image shows the BMC Helix Service Management installation on a multitenant BMC Helix Platform:
Non-production systems sharing one BMC Helix Platform
An organization wants to install BMC Helix Service Management for in-house development and testing. A system administrator creates a cluster to host the development and QA environments that use the same BMC Helix Platform services. The administrator creates two BMC Helix Platform tenants, Dev Tenant and QA Tenant, by using the tctl utility. The administrator then installs BMC Helix Service Management for the Dev Tenant and the QA Tenant by using deployment pipelines.
The following image shows a shared development and QA cluster:
Workflow to install BMC Helix Service Management in a BMC Helix Platform multitenant environment
The following table lists the tasks to install BMC Helix Service Management on a multitenant BMC Helix Platform environment:
Task | Description | Reference |
|---|---|---|
1 | Plan the installation | |
Review system requirements for BMC Helix Service Management installation. Make sure that you install the pre-requisite software such as Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and Jenkins, and meets the hardware and software requirements. | ||
2 | Prepare for installation | |
a | Download the installation files and container images access key from Electronic Product Download (EPD). | |
b | Create your Harbor repository and synchronize the repository with BMC Docker Trusted Registry (DTR). | |
c | Prepare the database that you want to use. | |
d | Set up the BMC Deployment Engine to call the relevant pipelines that deploy your applications. | |
3 | Install BMC Helix Platform and create tenants | |
a | In the BMC Helix Platform namespace, install BMC Helix Platform services. | |
b | Download the tctl utility from BMC Electronic Product Distribution (EPD) and set up it. | |
c | Create the required number of tenants in BMC Helix Platform by using the tctl utility. | |
4 | For a BMC Helix Platform tenant, install BMC Helix Service Management | |
a | Perform the following actions on the tenant to set up the installation environment:
| |
b | In the BMC Helix Innovation Suite namespace, install the platform and applications for the tenant. Important: In the TENANT_DOMAIN parameter, make sure that you specify the tenant name that you specified while configuring the BMC Helix Single Sign-On realm. | |
c | NA | |
Benefit
By installing BMC Helix Service Management on a multitenant BMC Helix Platform, you can reduce the overall compute footprint and consequently the infrastructure needed for BMC Helix Service Management deployment.
Multitenancy deployment considerations
Review the following points for multitenancy deployment:
- You require separate namespaces in the same cluster to install BMC Helix Innovation Suite for each BMC Helix Platform tenant.
For example, to install BMC Helix Innovation Suite on three tenants, you require three separate namespaces. - You require separate databases to install BMC Helix Innovation Suite for each BMC Helix Platform tenant.
For example, to install BMC Helix Innovation Suite on three tenants, you require three separate databases. - You do not require separate domains for application URL configuration for each tenant.
- After you offboard a tenant, you cannot use the same tenant's name to onboard a new tenant.
- Data of a tenant in the BMC Helix Platform is not available to other tenants hosted on the platform. A tenant administrator can view data of customers in a tenant for logging purposes.
BMC Helix Platform upgrades affect all the customers hosted on the platform and you must plan the upgrades diligently.