ERA 6 VA to ESMC VA howto/kb?

[carmik 0]

Hello,

got an ERA 6.x VA appliance. Most of the clients are still Windows XP clients running ESET Endpoint AV 6.5.x.

Now ESMC rolls out, and I see that there are issues regarding compatibilities etc. Two questions:

1) How can I migrate to ESMC VA from ERA VA? The ERA DNS name and ip will stay the same. Furthermore, ERA server is joined to my domains (which is a good, I believe, thing here).

EDIT: I stumbled upon this https://help.eset.com/era_deploy_va/65/en-US/pull_db_from_other_server.html however, I want to deploy the ESMC on the same IP/DNS name. How can I modify this procedure?

2) Do you foresee any problems managing those old XP/ESET ENdpoint systems under ESMC?

<grunt>I really hate the fact that I have to perform administrative work to switch my server/console. That should be done as part of an automatic upgrade procedure, and not requiring us to go through the hoops here...</grunt>

Edited October 7, 2018 by carmik
added tags

[MichalJ 434]

@carmik Automated upgrade from ERA 6.5 to ESMC will be enabled as soon as we will release the service release of V7, which we are now preparing. I do not want to promise any specific date, but it should be in few weeks. Then it will be possible to upgrade both your appliance and agents to the latest version, which is fully compatible with Windows XP. Please note, that latest Endpoint version is not officially compatible with Windows XP, so it´s OK, if you keep using the 6.5, which is the latest officially compatible version supporting Windows XP.

If you would still prefer to upgrade before the service release / automatic upgrades, what is unclear here? https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/va_upgrade_migrate.html

After removal (backing up) of the old ERA 6.5 server appliance, configure the new one, to have the same IP / DNS as the previous one.

[carmik 0]

21 minutes ago, MichalJ said:

@carmik Automated upgrade from ERA 6.5 to ESMC will be enabled as soon as we will release the service release of V7, which we are now preparing. I do not want to promise any specific date, but it should be in few weeks. Then it will be possible to upgrade both your appliance and agents to the latest version, which is fully compatible with Windows XP. Please note, that latest Endpoint version is not officially compatible with Windows XP, so it´s OK, if you keep using the 6.5, which is the latest officially compatible version supporting Windows XP.

Thanks for the info. I was certain that I can not go safely above 6.5 on xp, was not sure though about the agents. As for upgrading my VA to ESMC, I'll definitely wait for the service release. BTW, do you have some sort of announce-style mail list for significant new releases like that, to subscribe to?

21 minutes ago, MichalJ said:

If you would still prefer to upgrade before the service release / automatic upgrades, what is unclear here? https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/va_upgrade_migrate.html

The IP/DNS part. It is not clear that to perform an upgrade, you have to install the new ESMC VA temporarily on a new IP/DNS first, perform an upgrade migrate and then do this last part:

26 minutes ago, MichalJ said:

After removal (backing up) of the old ERA 6.5 server appliance, configure the new one, to have the same IP / DNS as the previous one. 

Perhaps it would be nice to detail how to setup IP/DNS of the new appliance, before doing the upgrade migrate, and how to setup it afterwards.

[MichalJ 434]

@carmik You can subscribe to news here: https://support.eset.com/news/ 

With regards to the documentation, I will contact documentation team with regards to improve the product / documentation. 

Edited October 8, 2018 by MichalJ

[carmik 0]

Thanks @MichalJ much appreciated.

[carmik 0]

@MichalJ: about a month and half has passed since our discussion. Do you know whether it is now possible to an ERA VA-> ESMC VA in-place upgrade and if so:

1) Is the procedure considered safe for production environments?

2) Link (in case it is other than https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/va_upgrade_migrate.html )?

Edited November 21, 2018 by carmik

[MichalJ 434]

Hello,

It is possible, however in order to improve the state of the OS, upgrade by migration to the new appliance. 

To answer questions:

1, yes

2, that’s the recommended procedure

[carmik 0]

(God this forum editor is giving me hell)

Hello again, I've downloaded the latest available VA. I'm still confused by your instructions though. For example, on step 5 of https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/va_upgrade_migrate.html it is mentioned that:

Quote

5.Verify that your new ESMC VA behaves the same way as the previous one:

oIf the new ESMC VA has different IP address:

[...]

• If the new ESMC VA has the same IP address:

How is it possible to reach this step and have the new ESMC with the same ip address as the older server? If one follows the previous steps, especially steps 2 and 3, then the new server will have to be configured with a different ip address. Otherwise, step 3 will be impossible: in order for the new server to connect to the old and grab its database, they obviously would have to be on separate ip addresses!

Edited November 28, 2018 by carmik

[karlisi 26]

2 hours ago, carmik said:

How is it possible to reach this step and have the new ESMC with the same ip address as the older server?

You can disable network interface for the new VA.

[carmik 0]

But if the new VA has the same ip with the old one, how will I be able to perform a database migration as per https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/va_upgrade_migrate.html ?