10/15/2014

Planning the upgrade - BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite 8.1 - BMC Documentation
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Planning the upgrade

Added by Hemant Baliwala, last edited by Hemant Baliwala on Jul 03, 2014

The following topics will help you to plan your upgrade:

Upgrade paths
Upgrade phases
Planning preupgrade readiness tasks
Planning upgrade tasks
Upgrade and overlays
Parallel versus in-place upgrade
Accelerated versus duplicated staging server
Upgrade scenarios
Upgrade sequence
Planning postupgrade tasks
Tools required for upgrade

Upgrade paths
Note
You can upgrade directly to BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.00 from BMC Remedy ITSM 7.0.03 patch 009, or a later version.
If, however, you are upgrading from a version earlier than BMC Remedy 7.0.03 patch 009, perform one of the following actions:
Do a fresh installation of BMC Remedy ITSM 8.1.00 and migrate the data.
First upgrade to BMC Remedy ITSM 7.0.03 patch 009 and then upgrade to 8.1.00.
You will be using one of these upgrade paths to get to the latest version of BMC Remedy ITSM. For each starting version, you must ensure that all components are the
correct versions.

Upgrade path

Description

Upgrade Path 1: From

versions earlier than 7.6.04

This upgrade path involves the following process:

1. Upgrade the BMC Remedy AR System server to the latest version.
2. Create overlays for all of your customizations. You can create customizations by using the Best Practice Conversion Utility (BPCU),
which converts all of your customizations into overlays.
3. Upgrade other components and applications to the latest versions.

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Upgrade Path 2: From
version 7.6.04 or later

Planning the upgrade - BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite 8.1 - BMC Documentation
If you have already created overlays, you can directly upgrade each component to the latest version. The Best Practice Customization
mode of BMC Remedy Developer Studio ensures that all customizations are saved as overlays.
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Upgrade phases
At a high level, the upgrade process is split into the following phases for better planning. These phases are valid for both upgrade paths:

Upgrade phase

Description

Phase 1: Preupgrade readiness

For this phase, you must plan to ensure that you have prepared the entire environment for a successful upgrade.
See Planning preupgrade readiness tasks.

Phase 2: Upgrade

For this phase, you must consider the upgrade sequence and upgrade type.
See Planning upgrade tasks.

Phase 3: Postupgrade

For this phase, you must plan for postupgrade tasks such overlay reconciliation, performance optimization, and sanity testing.
See Planning postupgrade tasks.
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Planning preupgrade readiness tasks

Ensuring preupgrade readiness requires performing of the following tasks:
Task

Additional information

Downloading the latest installers from www.bmc.com/support

See:
Downloading the installation files to upgrade
BMC Remedy ITSM Suite components and installers

Completing the upgrade checklists

See Completing the planning spreadsheet for an upgrade.

Ensuring that you meet all minimum version requirements

See Reviewing the compatibility matrix before upgrading.

Executing the BMC Remedy Configuration utility for overall health check before
upgrade

See BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility.

Backing up the operating systems and database (VM Snapshot)

You must perform the backup before you install each component.

Practicing the upgrade on a test environment

See Upgrade testing.

Freezing production rollouts from any administrative changes

Backing up all of the customizations. You must export the customizations from
Developer Studio

See Exporting objects. (This topic will open from the BMC Remedy AR System
8.1.00 space).

Resolving any known issues before the upgrade

See Known and corrected issues.

Performing server configuration adjustments per the documentation

See Preparing your components and applications for an upgrade.

Preparing for ITSM CI attribute and multi-tenancy changes

See Update to the multi-tenancy model.

For detailed information about preupgrade readiness tasks, see Preparing for upgrade.
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Planning upgrade tasks

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The type of upgrade that you perform depends on which of the following scenarios describes your situation:
Situation

Additional information

You want to upgrade a single server or server group environment.

You are upgrading with overlays already implemented or you want to implement them.

See Upgrade and overlays.

You want to do an in-place (without staging server) or a parallel (with staging server) upgrade.

See

Here, you need to decide if you want to use an accelerated staging or duplicated staging environment.

Parallel versus in-place upgrade

Accelerated versus duplicated staging environment

Note
Refer to the end-to-end steps for performing the upgrade that applies to your specific scenario. See Upgrade scenarios.
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Upgrade and overlays

In BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04, the overlays feature was introduced to preserve application customizations during the upgrade process. During an
upgrade, the upgrade installers ignore application overlays and change only the objects that were originally installed with the application or server. After the upgrade, the
application or server continues to use the overlays instead of the origin objects for runtime operations so that the customizations are preserved. For more information,
see Upgrading with overlays already present.
When upgrading from a previous release that was customized without overlays, you will need to create overlays for existing customizations, acquire origin objects, restore
origin objects on the staging server, and minimize the number of overlays on your system. For more information, see Upgrading without overlays already present.
The following terms will help you to understand the overlays implementation:
Custom object: A customer-created object that is not distributed by BMC.
Origin object: An original, unmodified object that is included with a released BMC product.
Overlaid object: An origin object that has an overlay associated with it.
Overlay object: A customized version of an origin object that is used in place of the origin object. In this case, the origin object becomes an overlaid object.
For detailed information about the overlays feature, see Customizing applications using overlays and custom objects in the BMC Remedy AR System documentation.
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Parallel versus in-place upgrade

The following table compares the parallel and in-place upgrade methods.
Parallel upgrade (with staging server)

In-place upgrade (without staging server)

Uses a staging server, which allows you to upgrade your application and create overlays or otherwise address
pre-existing customizations to your BMC Remedy AR System server objects while your production server
remains available to users

Additional staging hardware is not needed. Additional

load balancer or configuration updates are not needed.

The original production environment is preserved, allowing fast fallback.

You perform the upgrade in the production environment.

Minimal end-user downtime

Minimal overall upgrade time and complexity

Need to perform delta data migration

Delta data migration is not needed. Data validation is

not needed.

Upgrade is not confined to a fixed upgrade window. Upgrade can be done over several days or weeks.

You can perform the upgrade in stages by initially

upgrading the BMC Remedy AR System server or BMC
Remedy Mid Tier.

For server group:

For server group:

Users can be active throughout most of the process.

Users can start accessing each secondary server after it is upgraded and added to the Load Balancer.

Users can start working after the primary

administration server is upgraded.
Users can start accessing each secondary server
only after it is upgraded.
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Accelerated versus duplicated staging server

The following table compares accelerated and duplicated staging servers.
Accelerated staging server

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Duplicated staging server

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To upgrade using an accelerated staging server (database-only upgrade), you create a copy of the
production server database in the staging environment only.

To create a duplicated staging server, you create an exact

duplicate of your production server.

The AR System server must be upgraded on the staging server against the copy of the production server
database only.

You must perform a normal upgrade with file system.

BMC out-of-the-box configurations are applied after the upgrade in the staging environment.

Configurations of the production environment are retained in

the staging environment.
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Upgrade scenarios
The following diagram illustrates the upgrade scenarios.

Depending on your upgrade scenario, follow the end-to-end steps documented in one of the following topics:
Parallel (with staging server) upgrade in a server group with overlays present
Parallel (with staging server) upgrade on a single server with overlays present
In-place upgrade on a single server with overlays present
In-place upgrade in a server group with overlays present
Parallel (with staging server) upgrade in a server group without overlays present
Parallel (with staging server) upgrade on a single server without overlays present
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Upgrade sequence
You must upgrade the BMC Remedy ITSM suite components in the following sequence:

This sequence implies that you must first upgrade the platform, then upgrade your CMDB, then your applications, and finally all clients that reside on your local computer.
For information about different installers and the components they install, see BMC Remedy ITSM Suite components and installers.
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Planning postupgrade tasks

The following diagram shows the postupgrade tasks that you will perform:

Task

Additional information

Base, overlay, and

custom objects review

Compare new features with customizations and remove unneeded overlays.

Performance
optimization

Complete the performance-tuning tasks. See Performance tuning for BSM. (This topic will open from the BMC Remedy AR System
space).
Determine if you have any forms with large amounts of data that can be removed or archived.

Sanity testing

Perform end-to-end tests that utilize any of the new functionality added by the upgrade, as well as existing functionality that your end
users will utilize. Ensure that you edit any existing test scripts so that they work in the new environment.
Perform performance and stability testing to ensure that your system is ready to go live.
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Tools required for upgrade

You will need the following tools when you upgrade:
Tool

Description

Best Practice
Conversion
Utility (BPCU)

Helps to identify platform and application customizations and convert them to overlays. See Creating overlays with the Best Practice Conversion
Utility.

BMC Remedy
Migrator tool

Helps to synchronize data among your BMC Remedy AR System development, staging, and production systems. See Migrator tools.

Delta Data
Migration tool

Allows you to upload the data that changed on a production server during the time that a staging server was being upgraded. You will need this tool to
perform the staged upgrade, whether or not overlays are implemented. See Migrator tools.

BMC Remedy
Developer
Studio

Required for all upgrades. BMC Remedy Developer Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for BMC Remedy AR System applications.
See, Application development with BMC Remedy Developer Studio.

BMC Remedy
Configuration
Check utility

The BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility is a centralized framework utility that validates the environment for BMC Remedy AR System
installation or upgrade. This utility also validates the BMC Remedy AR System server configuration and customization, and generates a consolidated
report. See BMC Remedy Configuration Check utility.

Snapshot plugin

To obtain a list of all of the overlay objects that were modified in the latest release, obtain the Snapshot utility (a Developer Studio plug-in). This
unsupported utility is available on the BMC Developer Network (https://communities.bmc.com/communities/community/bmcdn).

Maintenance
Tool

Product diagnostic utility for performing health checks, collecting logs, and encrypting passwords. See, BMC Remedy ITSM Maintenance tool.

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