Considerations for a GAIA OS Upgrade

[Matlu]

Hello, team.

Are there any considerations to take into account before upgrading from e.g. R81 to R81.10?

I just "simulated" the scenario in a lab environment using the CPUSE UPGRADE from the GAIA PORTAL of my GW (I have only one SMS + 1 GW).

At the moment when I was "applying the installation" on the GW, I lost the connection between the SMS and the GW (In the SmartConsole, it appears that the GW has lost the connection).

This left me wondering "why?", because to recover the management, I had to wait for the GW to update, and I had to "reset" the SIC again.

I want to avoid mishaps at the time of upgrading in my productive environment (since I have to upgrade 2 Clusters with R81 version to R81.10) and that is why I consult on the basis of your experiences.

Thanks for your comments.

[Bob_Zimmerman]

You shouldn't have needed to reset SIC. It definitely survives upgrades. During the upgrade on a firewall, services stop. Eventually the firewall reboots. You won't have any communications with it until it's done rebooting to the new version.

I highly, highly recommend upgrading with CDT, either on the command line or in SmartConsole. Once you have your management upgraded to R81.10, connect to SmartConsole. Right-click on your cluster object, go to Actions, then pick Version Upgrade. It handles updating CPUSE, distributing the CPUSE package, upgrading one member, enabling cross-version sync, failing over, then upgrading the other member. Seriously, this is my favorite new feature from Check Point since the initial release of R80.

I've upgraded around 70 clusters this way. There are occasional snags during the upgrade process, but those would have been hit during a manual upgrade, too.

[the_rock]

As @Bob_Zimmerman said, SIC reset would not be needed. Personally, I always use CPUSE, as it never gave me trouble, but thats just my own preference, to each their own : - )

Andy