AWS Security Management In-Place Upgrade

[Smorales]

Hi team.

I need to upgrade from R81.20 to R82 a Security Management deployed on AWS for support reasons (as you know, support for R81.20 ends in November this year), so I am setting up a lab to practice the procedure before applying it with client.

However, I have a question because the important notes where the update package for these virtual instances is downloaded mention that before updating, you should verify that the same instance (Security Management) has not been previously updated using the same method, as updating with in-place is only supported once.

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk177714

The detail here is that this Security Management was updated from R80.40 to R81.20 a couple of years ago using the same method of importing the In-Place package.

My question is whether I am misunderstanding this or whether I really will no longer be able to update to R82 using this package.

I am going to try updating my lab from R82 to R82.10 to see what happens, but I would like to know if anyone else has been in my situation or has any other insights regarding this note.

Best regards.

[the_rock]

Migrate server is way to go, but ONLY works on freshly installed machine. Btw, R81.20 is supported till May 2027.

[Smorales]

Hello,

do you mean this In-place package only works in new deployed instances?

And that's good to hear. The last time I checked (like February 13), it still said November 2026.

[the_rock · Accepted solution]

Yes, thats what I mean.

see below

https://www.checkpoint.com/support-services/support-life-cycle-policy/

[the_rock]

Btw, here is something else I wanted to say. This is NOT supported, but it does work. I had experience with customer few months ago where they luckily had working backup and had to rebuild their Azure mgmt, and we did end up restoring successfully to it from the backup file. This is obviously fully supported on regular mgmt/firewalls, but not for cloudguard, but thankfully, it worked.

I strongly recommend R82 across the board, its very stable now.