Upgrading from SMB to 5k appliance

[Vincent_Bacher]

Hello community,

because of load issues we are planning to replace a SMB cluster by a 5k series cluster. All settings will stay the same.

As the SMB cluster is a different type of Checkpoint object it's not just done by replacing the hardware and reset sic and change the hardware type inside the object.

Hard way would be to remove all references, delete smb cluster, create new cluster and re-define all references. 

As cluster object is referenced in huge number of objects (access rule install on, (hiding) nat src, ips etc), this is much effort.

Does anyone have ideas to reduce the work effort or is there just the hard way?

Smart Center runs R80.10 and 5k cluster will be R80.10 as well. SM Cluster runs R77.20.60.

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks in advance and best regards

Vince

[Vladimir]

Vincent,

The cluster is just a placeholder for the member gateways and short of Network Topology properties, platform and the version of the software there is really little that will be changed initially during migration.

Can you clarify this statement for me to better understand your problem: "As the SMB cluster is a different type of Checkpoint object"?

Please define the SMB cluster (appliance model, management mode) and maybe post a few screenshots of the object highlighting the differences that giving you trouble?

Thank you.

[PhoneBoy]

"Regular" Clusters and "SMB" Clusters are different object types.

As far as I know, one cannot convert between these types.

That said, you can use the "Where Used" option in SmartConsole to replace instances of your old cluster with your new one to ease the transition.

Right-click on the object and select Where Used.

[Vincent_Bacher]

Well. I was afraid of that.

And "where used is one of my most used features in CP policies every day

So I have to change names and up addresses of the old cluster to dummy names and addresses and create new cluster with the correct names an address. 

And then the busywork with where is begins.

Customers central policy package is huge ....

Anyway 

Thank you very much for replying.

[Tomer_Sole]

I know we could do more to help on that scenario and we are working on more tools for this, but at least: you can leave that session as "unpublished" and the things are auto-saved on the server. So that change can take weeks and others could push simple policy changes until you feel ready.

[Vladimir · Accepted solution]

Have you tried the "Replace" function in the "Where Used", after changing names and IPs?

[Vincent_Bacher]

Good point. That feature was new for me. That could be exactly the way to avoid much work. Thank you. Will do it that way as soon as the appliances are shipped.

Best regards

Vince

[Vladimir]

Please let us know if it'll work for you, as I have not used it before and am very interested in your experience.

Regards,

Vladimir

[Vincent_Bacher]

Sure. Will do that after my holiday in Janary or February at the latest.

[Vladimir]

Would the management server not object to creation of the gateways and the cluster objects with identical IPs, especially when the SIC will have to be established?