Flowchart for performing minor upgrades

[Nick_Doropoulos]

I have noticed that though a fairly straightforward process, performing minor upgrades on Check Point firewalls is a task that a lot of beginners are afraid of. 

To that end, I have put together a basic flowchart which outlines the process in an illustrated way:

I would be happy to add anything else I might have omitted.

Thanks. 

[Christian_Koehl]

Dear Nick,

for the backup-section, please add a hint to store the backup not on the appliance itself, e.g. store it on a different server / location.

Best regards,

Christian

[G_W_Albrecht]

Another hint: Performing the backup is an important step, but the most important step especially for SMS is: Restore the backup ! As you do rely on the backup you have to make sure it can be restored. Imagine getting completely stuck during upgrade steps, no help available anymore and then the restore fails.

To free disk space may be needed sometimes, but when gateways are concerned, in many cases you could just do a clean install instead of an upgrade.

[Richard_Clyne]

I normally do a Snapshot on gateways as well as it becomes a very easy to restore backup if there is a rollback required

[Nick_Doropoulos]

All valid points. Thank you very much for your input!