Upgrade the SMC Appliance

Use an upgrade patch to upgrade the SMC Appliance from a previous version to version 7.2.1.

There are two kinds of SMC Appliance patches:

  • Hotfix patches include improvements and enhancements for the current SMC Appliance version.

    Hotfix patch files use the letter P as a separator between the version number and the patch number. Example: 7.2.1P001

  • Upgrade patches upgrade the SMC Appliance to a new version.

    Upgrade patch files use the letter U as a separator between the version number and the patch number. Example: 7.2.1U001

We recommend checking the availability of SMC Appliance patches regularly, and installing the patches when they become available. For detailed information about installing SMC Appliance patches, see the Forcepoint FlexEdge Secure SD-WAN Installation Guide.

The following features are removed and are no longer supported:
  • ATD Server. This feature is only supported on engine versions 5.8 to 6.3.
  • ePO Server.

  • BrightCloud situations and categories. This feature is only supported on engine version 6.4 and older.

    Before you upgrade, if any of the legacy BrightCloud URL category situations or tags are referenced in policies, filters, or reports, you must remove these references or change references to point to the current URL categories.

    Navigate to Configuration > Engine > Other Elements > Network Applications to remove or change references of the legacy BrightCloud URL category situations or tags.

    The BrightCloud situations are identified with their name that has the pre-fix “BC_".

    The following is the list of BrightCloud categories:
    • URL Filtering
    • Games / Gambling
    • Lifestyle
    • Drugs
    • Information / Technology
    • Society / Education / Religion
    • Mature / Violent
    • Purchasing
    • Risk / Fraud / Crime
    • Business / Services
    • BrightCloud System Situations
    • Entertainment / Culture
    • Pornography / Nudity
    • Information / Communication
    • Network Bandwidth Loss
    • Productivity Loss
    • Security Risk
    • Legal Liability
    • Business Usage
    Important: Before you upgrade, remove these elements or change them to current supported features in your SMC configuration.
  • SMC 7.2 requires an updated license.
    • If the automatic license update function is in use, the license is updated automatically.
    • If the automatic license update function is not in use, request a license upgrade on our website at https://⁠stonesoftlicenses.forcepoint.com. Activate the new license using the Management Client before upgrading the software.
  • The SMC Appliance must be upgraded before the Secure SD-WAN Engines are upgraded to the same major version.
  • You can upgrade from the following SMC versions; however, only the latest maintenance release and LTS versions are tested. Hence, It is recommended to upgrade to the latest LTS release of SMC, regardless of NGFW Engine versions being managed. For detailed information on how to upgrade SMC Appliance to a new version, see Forcepoint FlexEdge Secure SD-WAN Installation Guide.
    • 6.10.13 - 6.10.14
    • 7.1.1 - 7.1.3
    Note: Attempting an upgrade to 7.2.1 from any other version will result in an error when loading the patch: ERROR: Unable to load 7.2.1U001.sap to /var/ambr/downloaded. ERROR: wrong tag ERROR: Failed to load: 7.2.1U001.sap You must upgrade to 6.10.13 or 7.1.1 before attempting an upgrade to 7.2.1.

    For detailed information on how to upgrade the SMC Appliance from a version that is not listed above to a newer version, see Knowledge Base article 41318 .

  • If you configured SNMP for the SMC Appliance before upgrading to version 6.4.0 or higher, you must configure SNMP again.

You can upgrade the SMC Appliance using the Management Client or using the appliance maintenance and bug remediation (AMBR) patching utility on the command line of the SMC Appliance. For detailed information, see Forcepoint FlexEdge Secure SD-WAN Product Guide.