Scott, With the occasional small exception, you can run earlier versions of applications on later versions of the server without a problem. The system is designed for backward compatibility and with the expectation that customers will regularly upgrade the AR System server and midtier and like system components but may only periodically upgrade any application we supply.
And further, the AR System is a development environment that many customers have built custom applications on. We have to be able to upgrade the AR System without impacting those applications. And, again, with the exception of an occasional small issue (OK, someone missed something and a bug crept in), this works. There have been one or two times where there was an issue large enough where there was a known incompatibility that we announced and described how to resolve that we just had to make a change to the system that produced an incompatibility. An example of that was when we found that the On Loaded firing condition was firing at the wrong time so that data was not being properly cleared on the screen by the Display operation. Now the applications actually had written some logic that was inadvertently using this bug and when it was fixed, the firing condition of maybe a dozen active links throughout the apps needed to be changed form On Loaded to On Display. The operation was the same, just the wrong condition was being used and the bug allowed the wrong condition to work. Our choice when this was found was to leave the logic permanently broken in this area or to fix it. Fixing it solved 10x the problems that customers were having than the fix caused and it make the behavior correct. So, we decided to fix it and call out the change. Even with this type of issue, no problem running the older version of ITSM on a newer version of AR System -- just a few active links needed a minor change to account for the behavior change due to the bug fix. But, this type of change is unusual and has happened maybe twice in 20 years. And the correction was provided and was easy to put in place in both cases. You should have no issue running the ITSM 7.1 version on a 7.6 AR System server. (other than the fact that the one issue I called out above was either in 7.1 or 7.5 that we had the bug fix that did affect a few pieces of active link workflow -- if it was 7.1 you are clear, if it was 7.5, you have a small number of active links to change a firing condition on). And, I am remote and don't have access to the release notes to confirm which release this topic came with. So a Yes, it will work with a point qualification about one possible issue you need to consider. Doug Mueller -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scott Hallenger Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 5:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ITSM 7 Defs Running on ARS 7.6 Well in my scenario, the client would pay for the new ARS 7.6 licesnse, but would maintain their existing ITSM 7.1. I am still not clear on if 7.1 ITSM would run on ARS 7.6. From a def stainpoint it seem completely possible. Just looking for someone to chime in here who has done this or similar. BTW does a new install still come wit the 3 demo licenses... ? That could be useful for testing. -------------------------------------------- On Tue, 11/25/14, LJ LongWing <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: ITSM 7 Defs Running on ARS 7.6 To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 5:59 PM ** I would say yes...they are entitled to it and received it during their support window.... On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Jason Miller <[email protected]> wrote: ** You and LJ are likely correct. I have heard similar things. It is just odd to me and seems against how a typical license agreement is written. I am so use to "you can use this as long as you pay us" (for server software, not Office, etc.) I just figured BMC wasn't enforcing it or going after the organization it knew about. So in the scenario above, what if the organization downloaded 7.6 or even 8.x before they dropped support. They can upgrade since they downloaded it during their entitled period? Jason On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Rick Westbrock <[email protected]> wrote: ** I would check on ARS/ITSM compatibilities, I have heard of a customer who was on ARS 7.1 and ITSM 7.0.03 and could not upgrade ARS to 7.5 because their current version of ITSM would not work with that version of ARS. I heard about this years after the fact so I don’t know if any testing was done or if they were just going on what BMC reported to them. As far as support my understanding (whether it’s correct or not is up for debate) is that you should be able to run forever without a support contract but you lose all abilities to initiate a case with BMC Support, no access to patches or any other software and so forth. I haven’t read the fine print of a contract though so I could be wrong. I was at a customer once who ran without support for nearly a year without a support contract because they were planning to migrate from Remedy to a different platform. As I recall BMC didn’t have a problem with the system running without a support contract, they just wouldn’t sell additional licenses without renewal of the overall support contract. If you were to buy software and a specific number of licenses wouldn’t you expect to be able to run that software with that user count in perpetuity regardless of whether you had a support contract? I think in Scott’s case the customer needs to upgrade ARS for compliance reasons so they are going to have to accept the costs associated with that (i.e. purchase a support contract) or migrate to another platform (IMHO). -Rick From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jason Miller Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2014 2:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ITSM 7 Defs Running on ARS 7.6 ** Thanks for the info. Viable, yes. Potentially with some challenges. We are still on Help Desk 6 on 8.1 ARS. I stop short of calling it ITSM because all we are using is Help Desk and this was before Assignment Engine, EIE/AIE and various other newer processes external to AR that now make up the whole ITSM suite tick. At this point I call it ours because it is so customized and so far out of support that we'll never upgrade over it. In fact we recently converted all of the Help Desk, CMDB and SLA objects to Custom (I plan on deleting the CMDB and SLA stuff, we don't use them and are already broken binary-wise). With that said we still pay for support (granted we were heading down the ITSM 8.x path until recently). Servers get old and need to be replaced, that old version of ARS will will only go so far with newer OSes. We will need new license keys for the new servers (without playing illegal games). We do a ton of development and we want to continue to incorporate new (UI) features. Starting at 7.5 the new and updated web UI controls have been highly valuable. We too use Remedy every day and it is considered one of higher priority apps DR wise (much of the info we need to recover is stored in Remedy). My aim is not to call out your customer however we are dancing around some legalities... How can an organization upgrade ARS without a support contract? The reasons your customer is not able to access parts of the BMC site, including software, is because that entitlement ran out with support. I have heard stories of long-running systems that have been off of support for years so I know they are out there but I don't think legally an organization can continue to run Remedy without support?.?.? I haven't read the license agreement that closely and am not qualified to be authoritative on the subject but it is my understanding. Jason On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Scott Hallenger <[email protected]> wrote: Long story here.... but they use remedy every day, yet they dont want to upgrade itsm.... they are happy enough with their itsm as it is. However, they are running in to compliance issues outsode of remedy, like with MS..... Again long story, but I'm just checking if this could be a viable plan B. So I really need some ipinions to ring in here. -------------------------------------------- On Tue, 11/25/14, Jason Miller <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: ITSM 7 Defs Running on ARS 7.6 To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 3:17 PM ** You bet it is ok. You have my blessing. <smarta$$ off> I have not specifically run ITSM 7.1 on ARS 7.6 but largely you should be ok. There are some behaviors that may have changed between ARS 7.1 and 7.6 and might give you a few minor surprises but for the most part the def won't care. I think if anything you might run into more issues with 7.1 binaries and a 7.6 server. Assignment Engine and Approval Engine might be interesting since those are now AR components but were ITSM components in earlier versions. You might choose to no upgrade those as part of the AR upgrade to keep them inline with version that the ITSM def were designed around. From your previous post it sounds like you (or your customer) don't mind if it is an unsupported configuration and are working more to keep the lights on. Really the only way to know will be to stand up a sandbox and test thoroughly. Although if you no longer have support getting licenses for that sandbox could be prohibitive. Your customer might need to check what they want to do (or not do) with reality. How important is Remedy to them? Not important enough to pay for support but important enough to try and keep it updated? Jason On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Scott Hallenger <[email protected]> wrote: Seem completely feasable to me, but wanted to consult the minds on this as well. Is it OK to run a full ITSM 7.1 def set on ARS 7.6. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
