Upgrading the platform



From 9.1.04 onward, BMC recommends you to upgrade the platform components by using the zero-downtime upgrade method. If you wish to, you can perform staged upgrade for the platform components. Whether zero-downtime (in-place) or staged upgrade, you must upgrade the platform components on all the servers of a server group and then upgrade the application components.  

You can upgrade the platform components (BMC Remedy AR System and BMC Atrium Core) separately from any applications on the system. You must upgrade the AR System server and the Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) together, and they must be at the same version. You can perform zero-downtime upgrade for the platform components. 

BMC Remedy Mid Tier must be upgraded before the AR System Server is upgraded. Midtier 18.08 can be run against the lower version of AR System Server and BMC Atrium Core CMDB.

In this section

Before you begin

Plan

Create an upgrade plan by reviewing the section Planning-an-upgrade. This document covers important upgrade decisions and considerations, such as system requirements, which upgrade method to use, and which components to upgrade.

Prepare

Complete the tasks in the Preparing section, which will help you prepare for running the upgrade installers.

 

Platform upgrade process


Best practice
Document and resolve all installation problems before upgrading the next component.

Warning
  • While the upgrade is processing, you should not perform any Remedy AR System or Atrium CMDB administrative functions until the upgrade is complete for that system.

  • If you are using a currency format other than the default(default format is USD), you must run the currency utility before upgrading the platform and application components to 9.1.04 or later versions. Running the currency utility preserves the customization relevant to currency settings. Download the latest currency utility from BMC Communities. As a precaution, take a backup of the database before running the currency utility. The database backup might be required if a power outage or some technical issue interrupts the currency utility. 

    To run the currency utility manually, see Running-currency-utility-before-upgrading-the-platform-components. 

Order

Action

Additional information

1

None.

2

Prepare the server group for an upgrade.

When you are performing a zero-downtime upgrade or an upgrade with an outage window, first check the following details:

Start the non administrative servers one by one and ensure the following items:


    • Administration, CMDB, and Approval operations have the same ranking within a non administrative server.  
    • For each server in a server group, ensure that the Server-Connect-Name option is set to the local AR server name, not the load balancer name or the server group name. 
    • For version 9.x or later, update the Server-Connect-Name setting on the Centralized configuration form.  For versions prior to 9.x, update this setting in the ar.cfg (Windows) or ar.conf (UNIX) file. To update the Server-Connect-Name, see Configuration settings S-Z.

To prepare a server group for upgrade, do one of the following actions:

3

The primary server in the context of upgrades is the server that has a rank 1 for administration operation in the AR System Server Group Operation Ranking form. You should first upgrade the server with the administration operation rank 1 because administration operations ownership is required to import workflows during an upgrade.

Process overview

Order

Action

Additional information   

1

Components and plug-ins upgraded

Components

  • BMC Remedy AR System server
  • BMC Remedy Email Engine
  • BMC Remedy Approval Server
  • Assignment Engine
  • Flashboards

Plug-ins

  • AR External Authentication (AREA) LDAP
  • AR System Database Connectivity (ARDBC) LDAP
  • Web Services
  • Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
  • Full Text Search (FTS)

2

This step is required only if you have BMC Remedy Smart Reporting installed in your current environment.

If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.x, you have to perform a fresh installation of the BMC Remedy Smart Reporting component. For instructions, see Preparing to install BMC Remedy Smart Reporting.

3

(Windows) You can upgrade clients before or after the AR System server upgrade. Use the BMC Remedy AR System installer (ARSuiteKitDeveloperWindows.zip) to upgrade the following clients:

  • BMC Remedy Developer Studio (and the Localization Toolkit)
  • BMC Remedy Data Import
  • BMC Atrium Integrator Spoon

Note: The clients can be installed on Windows only; they are not available for Linux or UNIX.

4

Installing or upgrading a product on an encrypted BMC Remedy AR System server is not supported.

Best practice
We recommend that you install BMC Remedy Encryption Security after you have upgraded all other components.

Before upgrading BMC Remedy ITSM applications, you must deactivate the BMC Remedy Encryption Security. For instructions, see Temporarily-deactivating-BMC-Remedy-Encryption-Security.

5

(Optional) If you are bound by a firewall or do not have access to internet, install the latest offline Help content.

4

Process overview

Task

Action

Additional information   

1.

Install BMC Atrium CMDB on the same computer on which the AR System server is installed.

2.

If BMC Atrium Core Web Services is installed on a different computer than BMC Atrium CMDB, you must upgrade BMC Atrium Core Web Services after you upgrade BMC Remedy AR System and BMC Atrium CMDB. If BMC Atrium CMDB and BMC Atrium Core Web Services are on the same computer, they are upgraded together.

3.

You must upgrade Atrium Integrator server before you install BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Service Request Management. Upgrade the BMC Atrium Integrator server on the computer where you have upgraded the BMC Remedy AR System server.

Process overview

Task

Action

Additional information

1,

Upgrade Atrium Integrator server
 

Choose the upgrade procedure based on your upgrade path:

Perform the Atrium Integrator server upgrade from 8.0 and later 



4.

(Optional) Install BMC Configuration Drift Management.Note: The latest version of BMC Configuration Drift Management that you can install is version 8.1.xx.

5.

(Optional) If you have not already done so during the BMC Remedy AR System upgrade, install the offline Help.

5

Reconcile AR customizations.

Reconcile once after you upgrade the platform on the primary server. See Adjusting-customizations-when-upgrading.

6

Upgrade Secondary Servers.

Repeat steps 1 to 4 for the Secondary servers.

7

Verify platform upgrade status for the entire server group.

  1. From Mid Tier, select AR System Administration > AR System Administration Console > System > General > Server Information.
  2. On the Server Information page,  verify the AR System server version and upgrade status. The status must be Done after AR System server is upgraded on all servers.

 

Where to go from here

Next task

Up to process

When you have finished upgrading the platform, return to the appropriate upgrade process:

 

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