Upgrade instructions

Take the following into consideration before upgrading the SMC.

Note: The SMC (Management Server, Log Server, and Web Access Server) must be upgraded before the Engines are upgraded to the same major version.
  • SMC 7.3 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 in the SMC Client before upgrading the software.
  • To upgrade a lower version of the SMC to 7.3, we strongly recommend that you stop all SMC servers and create a backup before continuing with the upgrade. After creating the backup, run the appropriate setup file, depending on the operating system. The installation program detects the old version and does the upgrade automatically.
  • When you upgrade the SMC, the dynamic update package that is included with the SMC installer is imported and activated. However, if a newer version of the dynamic update package has previously been imported or downloaded before the upgrade, the newest version is activated instead.
  • 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 Security Engine versions being managed.
    • 6.10.0 – 6.10.17 (LTS release versions), 6.10.100
    • 6.11.0 – 6.11.2
    • 7.0.0 – 7.0.4
    • 7.1.0 – 7.1.7 (LTS release versions)
    • 7.2.0 – 7.2.4

Deprecated features

Before upgrading, please consider these feature deprecations.

Table 1.
Feature Description
Legacy IPsec VPN algorithms removed Support for legacy and insecure IPsec VPN algorithms has been removed from Security Engine version 7.3. This includes the removal of support for DES and Blowfish ciphers, the MD5 message digest algorithm, and Diffie-Hellman groups 1 (768-bit) and 2 (1024-bit). SMC still supports configuring these algorithms for older, supported versions of the Security Engines.
Legacy Web Portal UI service removed Support for the legacy and insecure Web Portal UI service has been removed. It has been replaced with a re-implemented service using the SMC API, offering similar basic read-only admin access.