Connect with Remedy - Remedy 9 Upgrade Best Practices Webinar Q&A

Transcription

1 Connect with Remedy - Remedy 9 Upgrade Best Practices Webinar Q&A Date: Wednesday, March 02, 2016 Q: Does this cover version 9.1 and 9.0? A: It covers upgrading from older versions to 9.1 Q: What is granular overlays? A: Let us say you only have a couple of custom fields in a form that needs to be overlaid, granular overlay will just overlay those fields and not the whole form so you will still be able to use the out of the box form and its views and functionality Q: When upgrading from to V9.1. You need to do the granular overlay after AR server upgrade, and before ITSM upgrade? A: Yes this is recommended, you can also do this after ITSM upgrade too. If you convert overlays to Granular overlays after ITSM upgrade then you will see very higher number of overlays to reconcile. Hence BMC recommends to convert overlays to Granular overlays after AR System upgrade to 8.1 or 9.1, then capture snapshot, then proceed to ITSM upgrade. If you have converted overlays to Granular overlays in 8.1 upgrade, now when you are upgrading to 9.1, you do not need to convert overlays to granular overlays Q: Am working with a customer who chose to leave CMDB as architecture when upgrading to 8.x. Do they now HAVE to change that CMDB architecture to support 9.x? Other Remedy apps as well. I believe they only upgraded AR System to 8.x at this time. A: If they plan to upgrade Apps then they need to upgrade CMDB too, Installer validates AR System, CMDB and AI to be upgraded before upgrading ITSM

2 Q: Can I upgrade directly from 8.1 to 9.1 A: Yes, you can skip granular overlay conversion if you have already done during 8.1 upgrade. In case, your environment 8.1 is a fresh install then you can ignore granular overlay conversion. Q: Just to check 3-way reconciliation is available from 9.1 and not 9.0? A: It is available in 9.0 too, 3-way reconciliation is a Developer studio feature, you can use 3-way recon feature with 8.1/9.0/9.1 versions of AR Server, but you need to install latest Developer studio first and apply latest Dev studio hot fixes. Q: The amigo program can migrate SLAs, templates, and custom personalization? A: This program will show you the best practice documentation and answer upgrade questions. From this you will create your documented upgrade plan and validate it. The documented upgrade plan can be reviewed by support and feedback provided. You then would execute your upgrade plan. If you need help with creating your upgrade plan or performing the upgrade you could engage BMC PS to help. Q: Does AMIGO have additional costs on top of support contract? A: There is no charge for Amigo. It is a part of your support. Q: Will steps to upgrade a server group be part of the webinar? A: Not in this webinar. Our documentation has very clear instructions and steps for this. ers

3 Q: Have they fixed the CMDB process to allow for use of Overlays on BMC.CORE forms? A: CMDB Core forms can't be overlaid which have been considered as backend form. You can Overlay join forms like AST form. Q: Is it necessary to have connectivity between the environments such as development, test and production to perform these actions (3-way)? A: You need to at least login to two servers, first one is upgraded server and second one would be your production equaling OOB or your QA or Production env. Q: Is directly upgrade from to 9.1 possible? A: Yes, you can upgrade from SP2 to 9.1. Q: How is possible to start the AMIGO Program? A: Log a support case and put AMIGO STARTER in the summary or case details.

4 Q: Is FTS index located on the database, or still on a server by server file? how are those FTS Collection files kept in synch for server group environments? A: It is still located in file system level. FTS requires that at least one of the servers in a server group act as a primary FTS indexing server. To provide failover, you can have two or more primary FTS indexing servers in the server group where each server acts as an independent FTS server and indexing FTS in their own Collection directory. Each FTS indexing server (known as primary FTS indexing server) manages its own separate local replica of the full text index data. When an indexing action takes place, each FTS indexing server indexes it For example, if you create a form and then index a field on that form, each FTS indexing server indexes that field. Because you can have multiple FTS servers, each with its own current copy of the FTS data, you can fail over to a second server. Q: Regarding ITSM attributes in the Core forms vs. AST:Attributes: When installing ITSM 9.1 as an upgrade from 8.1 we are receiving a message in the installer that we have to run the installer a second time and select an option to move ITSM attributes from CMDB A: If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0 then the ITSM installer has 3 phases to cover the creation of the AST Attributes form and copy the data over from BMC Base Element and has an optional phase 3 which deletes those attributes (fields) from. If the starting 8.1 version was also a previous upgrade from a version prior to 8.0, then it sounds like the latter phase 3 was not ran. This is the only reason a message would be displayed. Phase 3 from that upgrade should be ran before the 9.1 upgrade. Q: CDM to AST:Attributes. Is this a standard message regardless whether there are ITSM attributes in the CMDB core forms or not? Because our 8.1 installation was a fresh installation. A: If you have 8.1 fresh installation, you won't have ITSM attributes as part of CDM and you will find AST:Attributes form which the list of attributes.

5 Q: Will a full FTS re-index be required after upgrading or is the index maintained. A: Yes, re-indexing is required Q: What was the for reducing the upgrade time link. A:Setting up upgrade servers using accelerated method - Q: Please confirm: We need to convert overlays to "granular" because this reduces the number of fields to reconcile after upgrade? A: This is mainly to cleanup your form overlays which were created prior based on a few custom fields or a custom view and now granular overlay allows you to just overlay the fields and the view instead of the whole form so you can see out of the box forms Q: When doing a re-index, does the index be dropped and then recreated? Or is the current index available during the re-index? A: FTS re-indexing needs to be done when users are off the system and during an upgrade phase as an activity Q: The message is displayed, but the second run is not required? Of course everything is already in the AST:Attributes form. We were just wondering whether the installer found an inconsistency. The message therefore is misleading A: Thanks for letting know. I would review the information and would take necessary actions.

6 Q: Regarding SmartIT version requirements, in case of upgrade on both SmartIT and ITSM, which one should go first? We are upgrading from to A: Upgrade SMART IT first. Q: Remedy 9 requires Smart IT 1.2, 9. requires SmartIT 1.3 A: ITSM 9 and 9 SP1 require SmartIT 1.2 or higher, ITSM 9.1 requires SmartIT or higher. The current version of SmartIT is 1.4 Q: The Always On Logging GUI button may be OK for small installs, but we have 15 AR servers. This should be scriptable. A: The feature is controlled through a Remedy form so it can be scripted using the driver utility. You would use SetEntry calls to set the options and a GSI call can be used to trigger the writing of the buffer. Q: Pre-Checker - when is BMC going to build this whole process as part of the installers? A: This is an ongoing process. Each release of the product includes more of the pre checker type functionality but there are some checks with are still better run before the installer is run. Q: If its 9.0 then which should go first?smart IT OR ITSM? A: If Smart IT is on 1.0 or 1.1 version then do SmartIT first.

7 Q: For Plugin Server Configurations. When we first start the system for the first time, I would assume that the form also populates the data from the pluginsvr xml, into the form. As soon as this is done. Should all plugin changes be done only on the form? A: Yes. The first time the plugin server starts, similar to other components such as Engine, it registers in Centralized Configuration and posts all the configurations there. Subsequently, all config changes should be made only via the CC UI Q: So, you must have Atrium integrator installed to upgrade to 9.0? We are currently on if we don't currently have it installed should we install before upgrading to 9.1? Thanks A: Yes, Atrium Integrator is required for ITSM 9 - you will need to upgrade the server and CMDB and then install Atrium Integrator 9 before upgrading ITSM Q: What bandwidth does the pre-checker need i.e. will it slow the system down when used? A: Pre-checker is lighter operation and you shouldn't observe the system slowness. Q: Does BMC recommend updating to your latest patch for your version before you upgrade to 9.01 A: Depends. There are recommended min. SP/Patch levels but typically those focus on SP. For example, if you are on , we don't require you to install a Patch prior to upgrade Q: Are there any licensing changes associated with the upgrade? A: From an end user perspective, no. Internally there are some but it is transparent to end users.

8 Q: Is there a limit to the hours in the AMIGO program? A: Similar to working a support case it isn t in terms of hours. For the two phases the program is introduced, you would review the best practice documentation and samples. Any questions from reviewing the documentation or upgrade in general would be answered and then the starter case is closed. Once you have created your documented upgrade plan and validated you would open a review case. The documented upgrade plan would be reviewed and feedback provided along with any questions you may have and then the review case is closed. Any specific problems or product specific questions would be non-amigo support cases for the specific component team.

9 Q: An earlier response indicated that an FTS re-index was required postupgrade. As part of the upgrade process there is an FTS conversion step, that takes your current FTS index and converts it to the new format. If a reindex is necessary anyway, would it make the upgrade go faster to clear the FTS index as a first step in the upgrade process? A: Yes, upgrade will go faster as there is no conversion required if you clear the FTS index as first steps. If you do not then typical times may be in the lines of

10 Q: Any changes in the T tables when migrating from 8.1 SP1 to version 9? This was the case when upgrading from 6.3 to thanks A: There are changes to some of the system tables such as ft_pending but no major architectural changes to the T table structures. Also overlaid forms now have the same name and schemaid as their base form - see Q: Does the 3 way reconciliation function come into play if you do an upgrade in place? We recently upgraded our dev environment from to 9.1 A: 3-Way reconciliation is a tool to help reconcile customizations (overlaid objects). Regardless of accelerated server or in-place upgrade customizations would still exist and need to be reconciled manually or using 3-way reconciliation. Q: Is there an easy place to see all known installer defects for any/all installers? A: Check the Release notes and notices - links for the different product components are listed. es Q: Can we upgrade in-place or are additional servers required during upgrade process. A:You can upgrade in-place by having different outage windows and upgrading and going live with AR, CMDB and Applications in different weeks. If you have a pre version then we recommend a parallel upgrade solution as you will get enough time to upgrade platform, create overlays and upgrade applications in a staging server and then use DDM to migrate delta data from live server and then you can go live with the new version in the staging server.

11 Q: We have a huge database and the recon jobs last year were taking very long to finish. Back then we were on CMDB and platform 8.1, We worked with BMC on multiple Hotfixes. Should I worry when upgrading this year to 9.1? A: Those fixes should be fixed in 9.1 so Recon should not have the same issue Q: The 3-way reconcile process can be a bit confusing. Can you provide a step-by-step process how to best benefit using the tool. A: This June 2015 Connect with Remedy Webinar covers 3-Way reconciliation - og/2015/06/02/connect-with-remedy-getting-to-90-easier-than-its-ever-beenwebinar Q: Should existing SRM 8.0 service requests continue to work under 9.1? A: Yes, they will work. Q: To create granular overlays...is there a setting in during the upgrade or do I have to go into each overlaid object to create granular overlay? A: See Adjusting customizations when upgrading documentation - upgrading Q: Where can we find release notes A: Check -

12 Q: How avg time would it take to do the upgrade? A: There is no clear answer here. It depends on lots of factors including amount of records to be upgraded; which version you are on; complexity of your architecture; amount of customizations! Q: Could you review the customization Reconciliation process again? A: See Adjusting customizations when upgrading documentation - upgrading Q: Do you recommend migrating to 9.0 (not upgrading) if you are upgrading the server OS & the DB version A: Most likely that is the best approach. Q: Do we need to run FT fortification again after upgrading from 8.1 to 9.1? A: No, if you have run the fortification it will not need to be done again. The fortification process was designed to address a specific problem with ITSM 8.1 Q: If FTS configured in server group on a single server with 3 instances of FTS plugin, based on BMC recommendations, will the installer configure it? A: No, you will need to configure FTS to your required configuration after the installation.

13 Q: Do I need to upgrade all servers in a server group at the same time prior to bringing the server group back online? A: The process would be to first shut down all but the admin server and upgrade that one first. Once that is done the secondary servers can be upgraded. You may also be interested in the Zero Downtime Upgrade path - see Q: If I modified some object in base mode, the snapshot mode will identify this changes? A: All your customizations should be made as overlays any customizations made in base should be converted to overlays. When upgrading all base objects will be overwritten and any change would be lost. To your question yes, see Q: Is there any changes to DDM to sync up the data between prod and upgraded environment..like handling deletions etc? A: Deletions are covered for the forms needed in a section in the DDM documentation Q: May I ask how to create a snapshot with developer studio? is this a new feature in...? A: Here is a January 2014 Connect with Remedy Webinar on Reconciling using the snapshot utility - og/2014/01/21/connect-with-remedy--reconcile-your-customizations-usingsnapshot-utility and also see documentation -

14 Q: Could you explain in a few words regarding DDM process, risks, preps etc.. A: There is no risk for DDM..it just migrates your delta data..all prep steps and the actual migration steps are all covered in a step by step documentation in docs.bmc.com Q: Putting it in another way: when migrating both Remedy and SmartIT, is there a recommended order for that? Which one should go first? A: The AR System upgrade is always first, then it would be followed by CMDB and applications including SmartIT. Q: Is it right that the centralized config form will store the configs for all servers in the server group only once? No configurations left on each server itself? A: The Centralized Configuration form is located in the database and stores data from all servers. In the current releases the system configuration files are maintained to reflect the same information for backwards compatibility. Changes made to the form data should be mirrored to the files. Q: Do we need to make any changes to the web services as 9.1 uses RESTFUL API? A: No. The REST API is an addition to the product and you can continue to use your existing web services.

15 Q: When upgrading from to ITSM 9.1. There is screen with 3 options related to CDM. The option we picked was to remove CI attributes from CDM, which is the recommended. However it didn't work. What should I do? re-run the upgrade? or run it manually? A: To investigate the current upgrade state create a support case as log files would need to be examined to make a recommendation. If instead you want to re-run the upgrade then follow the phased approach for the CI attribute removal from CMDB by first copying the CI. When done with that phase then upgrade to 9.1 and lastly run the phase that removes the attributes. Q: What kind of SLAs/Response times should we expect with the Amigo Program? A: AMIGO program has two phases that are initiated by creating a support case. The starter phase is to introduce the program and the review phase is to review your documented upgrade plan. The review phase minimum lead time is two weeks prior to the actual upgrade date to ensure there is enough time to review and provide feedback. Both phases are handled as Medium/Severity-3 cases. Q: FOR AIE jobs, are we need to transfer them into Pentaho manually? A: The migration from AIE to AI is highly recommended as AIE is obsolete and AI is much better tool with flexibility. There is a migration utility which can help migrating the configuration.

16 Q: Can you explain the 3 options for CI Attribute changes during ITSM upgrade 1. Only copy CI, 2. Upgrade to 9.1 but do not remove CI, 3. Upgrade to 9.1 and remove CI from CDM? Can we just pick #2 without going back and pick #3? A: Yes, if starting an upgrade where these choices are offered then #2 can selected. Once that is done to select #3 you would have to rerun the installer. There is a prior CwR webinar on this topic posted for Nov og/2013/11/13/connect-with-remedy--benefits-of-change-in-itsmapplications-ci-attributes Q: Does the 3 way reconciliation function come into play if you do an upgrade in place? We recently upgraded our dev environment from to 9.1 A: Yes, if you have customizations you can do a three way recon Q: FT fortification is within the OOB install of 9.1 as well right? A: ITSM 9 does not require the fortification process Q: How can you validate the FTS fortification is in place? A: You can look at the 'Must Haves' CSV file and see that only those Forms have FT Indexes on them. If you have other forms with FTS or MFS indexes, then the Fortification was not complete Q: After upgrading to 8.1 we have issue with Atrium integrator and still working on SRM since, there are issues after the installation, do you think we should fix the issue first before upgrade or the upgrade will fix the issue A: In general any problems after installation should be resolved prior to installing the next component. If the error is with functionality and resolved in a later patch, service pack, or release those would be an exception that would be resolved with that installation.

17 Q: To create granular overlays...is there a setting in during the upgrade or do I have to go into each overlaid object to create granular overlay? A: There is a Dev Studio tool that helps you quickly go through them and make changes. It makes a recommendation and you can often simply take that suggestion and move on. For each object Q: What happen if we don't reconcile an object? The application use the new version of the object or the old version? A: Your overlaid objects will still show your view and not OOTB views Q: We are on ITSM 8.1. Should we made any changes in Atrium SSO configuration after upgrade to 9.0? A: If there is any it will be covered in the documentation Q: In your opinion, what is more efficient and safe : upgrade a server from to 9.1 and make reconciliation of all customization OR to install a new server with version 9.1 and import and rework the customization in the new environment? A: To perform an upgrade. Q: Are those in sync with ar.cfg? meaning that the first time you restart the system the form populates those info from ar.cfg, after that, I should only work with the form? or can I also do changes on ar.cfg? A: Centralized config items are written to ar.cfg, but all changes should be made via the centralized config UI. Q: During our AR-upgrade we got a message regarding FTS, that it couldn't be installed due to invalid 'arschema'. Why do you got the message? A: Recommend you open a support case to help understand and resolve the message.