Update your Smoothwall On-Premise Appliance

This article applies to our On-Premise Appliance Filter and Firewall product only, not to Cloud.

 

You choose when to apply releases and updates to your On-Premise Appliance, unlike Cloud Filter, which applies updates automatically.

Each Smoothwall On-Premise update name includes a Release name and an Update level. For example Maiden-20 is update number 20 on the Maiden release.

  • Release: We launch a new release to add new features or make large changes to existing ones. We name each release after a famous UK castle, in alphabetical order. The latest release, Maiden, follows Leeds.
  • Update: A smaller package containing minor new features, smaller improvements, fixes for known issues and security updates. Updates are specific to a release version, so you will see Leeds updates to signify the update level of a release.

You can see a full list of all Updates since Leeds-65 here: On-Premise Appliance Release Notes

Best practices for updating your system vary depending on what Release you are moving to, and whether your On-Premise Appliance is a single-unit deployment, part of a cluster, or has a failover unit.

Before updating

Decide when to update

Once you start the installation, you cannot pause or stop it. Most updates take a few minutes to install, but moving from one release to another can take longer, so try to update during downtime at your organisation. Your Smoothwall appliance will automatically reboot once the update or release is installed.

Because of this, we recommend timing updates to be outside of regular hours to cause minimal disruption. You can manually update or schedule the update to a time that suits your organisation.

Check your restore points

Before you install an update or a release, the Smoothwall system will take a snapshot of the current system. You can see the last automatic system restore point from System > Maintenance > System Restore.

You can manually create restore points if you will be making significant configuration changes in stages, and want to be able to revert if needed.

To manually create a user restore point:

  1. Select New restore point.
  2. Name the restore point.
  3. Select Save.

You can Rename or Delete this restore point.

Update to the most recent version

You may have updates available a little later than other organisations. If you would like to install the beta version of an update, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Move to the next update

Go to System > Maintenance > Updates & Releases to see the current update installed.

  • Select Check for updates to check for the most recent update available to you.
  • Select Details to see which improvements and fixes this release includes.

To move to the next update, either:

  • Select Install to update immediately.
  • Select Schedule to choose a time to install the update and reboot. Select your time from the drop-down, then select Apply.
  • Use the Automatically schedule updates drop-down to select a time to install updates, then select Save.

    Note

    If the scheduled time has passed today, the update will occur tomorrow at the selected time.

Move to the next release

Releases available to you are shown in the Releases: new functionality and major upgrades section. Follow our specific guidance for releases: Prepare for the Maiden Release

What to do if you have issues with Smoothwall after updating

If you spot something small that doesn’t look quite right, contact Smoothwall Support.

If you have significant issues after updating, you can revert to your most recent User or System restore point:

  1. Go to System > Maintenance > System Restore.
  2. Select Restore.
  3. Read the important message, select the checkbox and select Restore and reboot.
  4. The Smoothwall appliance will automatically reboot once the restore point is installed.

Other scenarios

Hardware failover setup

If you are using hardware failover (also referred to as a High Availability or HA Pair), you should update the failover (secondary) unit before you update the primary unit.

Before updating, check if Auto Failback is enabled from System > Hardware > Failover.

  • If enabled, the failover (secondary) unit will return to standby once the primary unit is updated and has automatically rebooted.
  • If not enabled, the failover (secondary) unit will remain active and will not automatically fail back to the primary.

We recommend you swap the failover (secondary) unit to standby mode by selecting the Enter Standby Mode button once the primary unit has rebooted and entered Standby. You can check the status of the primary unit under System > Central Management > Overview.

To update your hardware:

  1. Sign in to your Smoothwall On-Premise Appliance.
  2. Go to System > Central Management > Overview. The failover unit will be listed, and you will see a notification that updates are available.
  3. Select the checkbox for the failover unit.
  4. Select Schedule update.
  5. Either:
    • Select Now to immediately update the failover unit, using the primary unit as a proxy.
    • Select Later and select the time from the drop-down to update later.

      Note

      If the scheduled time has passed today, the update will occur tomorrow at the selected time.

  6. Select Schedule Update.
  7. Once the failover unit has been updated and rebooted, return to the Central management > Overview page. The status will be set to Ok with a green tick mark.
  8. Go to System > Maintenance > Updates and Releases and update the primary unit.

Cluster setup

If you have systems that are part of a central management cluster, you must update all the child nodes before the parent node. You can do this in the same way as detailed in the Hardware failover setup section.

If it is not possible to update a child node, for example because it is offline, you should switch off replication before updating the parent node:

  1. Go to System > Central management > Child nodes.
  2. Select the pencil icon to edit the child node.
  3. Change the Replication profile to (no replication).
  4. Select Confirm.

When you are ready to update the child node, enable replication, update the child, and then the parent.

Load-balanced Cluster

If you have systems that are part of a cluster behind a load balancing system (loadbalancer):

  1. You should update each Smoothwall child node appliance one at a time, so decide the order in which you will update.
  2. Drain the first child node by removing it from the Loadbalancer pool in your Loadbalancer system, and wait until there is no traffic passing through it.
  3. Once the child node is inactive, update it from System > Central Management > Overview in the same way as detailed in the Hardware failover setup section.
  4. After updating a node, we recommend checking that it is working. Direct or proxy traffic from a specific user, computer, or person through the child node and check everything looks to be working as expected before adding the child node back into the Loadbalancer pool.
  5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each child node.
  6. You can update the parent node once all child nodes have been updated. You can do this in the same way as detailed in the Hardware failover setup section.