Contents

• 1.0 What's New
• 2.0 Software Compatibility Requirements
• 3.0 Installation Considerations
• 4.0 Upgrade Considerations
• 5.0 Known Issues

1.1 What's New in Serena Release Manager 4.5

Serena® Release Manager is the orchestrated solution for application release management that enables you to plan, manage, and automate the deployment of applications into test, pre-production, and production environments with one-click deploy, start-to-finish traceability, and end-to-end visibility.

1.2 Features

Features of Serena Release Manager include the following:

• Simplified release control

• Integration of Serena Release Control, Release Vault, and Release Automation

• Visual calendar views

• Integration with the Serena Orchestrated ALM set of solutions

New features of Serena Release Manager 4.5 include the following:

• Self-service Provisioning and Deployment enables you to create a virtual environment, such as Amazon EZ Cloud Services or a local VMware image, without any manual steps.
• Serena Release Automation Enhancements provide more capabilities for extending release management provisioning and deployment functions. See the Serena Release Automation documentation for more details.
• Improved enterprise scalability provides support for clustered application server environments. See the Serena Release Automation documentation for more details.

For details of supported versions of the products in the Serena Release Manager suite, supported platforms, and third party integrations, see the Serena Release Plan on the Serena Customer Support website on the product roadmap under Supported Platforms.

To get to this information from the Serena Support website main roadmap page, select Release Manager and then select your version.

See the Serena ALM Installation and Configuration Guide before beginning an installation or upgrade of Serena Release Manager.

• The installation of Serena ALM 4.5 includes the new version of the Serena Common Tomcat Web server that was introduced in Serena ALM 4.0.1. This version requires Dimensions CM 12.2.2 and is not backwards compatible with previous releases of Dimensions CM.

  If your configuration co-locates Serena ALM with Dimensions CM 12.2.1.1 or older, Dimensions CM must be upgraded before installing Serena ALM 4.5.

  The Serena ALM 4.5 installer will upgrade the Serena Common Tomcat Web server if the older version is detected. This upgrade moves the pre-existing Tomcat files into a backup location, tomcat6_pre4.5, and then installs the new common tools.

• To take advantage of the Vault Request and Vault Template functionality, you must use Dimensions CM 12.2.1.1 or above. The patch for Dimensions CM 12.2.1.1 is available on the Serena Customer Support Knowledgebase in Patch P2682.

3.1 Licensing

Use the following methods to apply licenses for the Serena Release Manager suite of products.

• Serena Release Control: Use Serena License Manager.

• Dimensions CM: Use Serena License Manager.

• Serena Release Automation: Obtain a license from Serena Support. See the Serena Release Automation User's Guide.

• Serena Release Automation, Powered by Nolio: Obtain a license from Serena Support. See the Serena Release Automation (Nolio) Installation and Administration Guide.

3.2 System Requirements

The system requirements for successful installation and execution of Serena Release Manager depend on your organization's usage requirements. You should determine your organization’s specific needs using the detailed documentation for SBM, Dimensions CM, and Serena Release Automation. For more details, see the Serena ALM Installation and Configuration Guide.

3.2.1 Server Considerations

For optimal performance, Serena recommends that SBM and Dimensions CM be installed on separate physical servers.

The upgrade from Serena Release Manager version 4.0.1 to version 4.5 may be done using the Serena ALM installer and post-installation instructions as documented in the Serena ALM Installation and Configuration Guide.

4.0.1 Major Changes

Some of the major changes in this release are:

• RESTful web services: Most of the SOAP Web services formerly used with HTTP binding in the RESTgrid widgets have now been replaced with true RESTful Web services. Only the Web services used with Serena Release Automation, Powered by Nolio, use the non-RESTful Web services for this release.

• Multiple solution files: The formerly single Serena ALM solution has been divided into four distinct solutions to make it easier to configure any single solution or just the combination you want. Solution files are provided for each of the following:

  • Serena Release Manager (RLM)

  • Serena Development Manager (DVM)

  • Products and Components for Serena Development Manager (OPD)

  • Serena Requirements Manager (RQM)

• Renamed process apps: The process apps have been renamed to make their purpose easier to identify. The old and new names are given in the following table.

  Suite	Old Name	New Name
  DVM	Development Manager	Serena Development Manager
  	Global Process App (eval)	Global Process App
  	ALM Projects	DVM - Development Projects
  	Dev Change Requests	DVM - Development Change Request
  	Dev Tasks	DVM - Development Tasks
  	Dev Packages	DVM - Development Packages
  	Dev Control Orchestration	DVM - Provider Connector
  	QC Connector	DVM - HP Quality Center Connector
  	RLM_AUX	ALM - Common
  OPD	Orchestrated Process Development	DVM - Products and Components
  	Products and Components	DVM - Products and Components
  RQM	Requirements Manager	Serena Requirements Manager
  	Requirements Approval Management	RQM - Requirements Approval Management
  	RM to RQM Connector	RQM - Dimensions RM Connector
  RLM	Release Manager	Serena Release Manager
  	Vault_Request	RLM - Vault Request
  	Environment	RLM - Environment
  	Deployment	RLM - Deployment
  	Application Release	RLM - Application Release
  	Release Train	RLM - Release Train
  	Release Package	RLM - Release Package
  	Release Template	RLM - Release Template
  	ALM_AUX	ALM - Common

For further details, see the Serena ALM Installation and Configuration Guide.

Solutions are available for known issues in the Serena Customer Support Knowledgebase. These solutions provide details about the issue and list associated fixes as they become available. Generally available fixes can be downloaded from the solution page online.

Issues known to exist in Serena Release Manager 4.5 are as follows:

1. If you are using Internet Explorer 8 as your Web browser, you must select Compatibility View in the IE Tools menu. Otherwise, some user interface elements, such as the Gantt view of the release train calendar, may not be displayed properly. (DEF231317)

2. If you are using the Firefox version 13 Web browser, you cannot manually enter sequence numbers when trying to re-order a list of deployment tasks. (DEF221479)

3. You cannot log out of the ALM Configurator once logged in through SSO. To resolve this issue, you must clear your Web browser cache. (DEF216580)

4. If you navigate to the ALM Configurator while logged into Serena ALM, and the user you are currently logged in as does not have permission to use ALM Configurator, you will receive an Axis2 error. To log onto the ALM Configurator, you must log out of the Serena ALM user interface, and then log into the ALM Configurator with an authorized user ID. (DEF222075)

5. If the ALM Configurator cannot save information to one of the configuration files, there is no obvious feedback. If you do not receive a successful message after saving, you should verify that your changes were made in the configuration files. (ENH222109)

6. If you attempt to save ChangeMan ZMF deployment tasks in deployment process templates, the forms are incomplete. You must create ChangeMan ZMF deployment tasks from release packages only. (DEF220545)

7. You cannot log into the Serena ALM Configurator if your system has an expired SSO certificate. If you receive an error similar to "ALF SSO Gatekeeper error", you must reset the expired certificate as documented in Serena ALM Installation and Configuration, "Troubleshooting". (DEF224185)

8. For the SSM integration, the release train workflow does not pass the Implementer value to the SSM Change Request workflow. The workaround is to set the Implementer value in a transition override for these transitions, preferably to the same user ID specified in the itsm.connection.properties file. (DEF222088)

9. If you receive a timeout error when creating the first release train, you must increase the Web services timeout value on your SBM server. To do so, in SBM System Administrator, navigate to Options | Settings | Database. In the Web Services section of that form, increase Web Service Invocation Timeout to a greater value, such as 60 seconds. (DEF231638)