Endpoint Protection

Hello everyone,

I'm planing to upgrade my SEPM 11.0.6 to 12.x (12.1 i think).

I was wondering if any of you already made it and how did you proceed :

I had few thoughts but not sure of wich would be the best (well the more appropriate ...)

I ve about 200 clients, 1 SEPM and 6 differents locations (1 is ou main LAN, 5 others are WAN linked connections)

The SEPM is on an ESX, so i can back it up easily

I was thinking of 3 things :

- Backup everything and upgrade from scratch (i mean launch the installer and let it do what he needs to)

- Using a fresh new install of Windows, installing the 12.x and adding it into the existing (this is where i don t know if the 11.x install will accept a 12.x partner ...) and moving clients to the new server

- Using a fresh install, put the 12.x and smoothly migration of the clients to the new server (via sylink.xml)

First means a downtime of the server

Second i m not sure of it would be doable

Third easy one but means a little more time to move all the clients ...

Thanks for the Help !

  1 SEPM and 6 differents locations .

if everything is working fine, upgrade on the same server. And configure GUP at the remote locations.

Hi,

Upgrade process is very simple, go through following article to know more about it.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/sep-11x-sep-121-upgrade-process-graphical-overview

Prior to upgrade take a backup or you can revert back with snapshot as you are using ESX.

To upgrade clients you can use auto upgrade method, only catch is about your remote clients.

You can scheduled upgrades step by step at non production hours.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/sepm-121-auto-upgrade

I hope it will help you !!!

We have done an upgrade a couple of weeks ago and we just launched the installer. It will detects the 11 version and automaticly provide you with the steps to upgrade. Just click Next, Next, ...

And if no erros occure your SEPM will be upgraded.

So the steps I think you should take are:

1. Backup your virtual machine (if something would happen you still can recover)
2. Start the installer of SEP 12 and follow the steps to upgrade your SEPM
3. After the SEPM has been upgraded lauch the console and remove the old 11 SEP packages from the packages page so updates for the old version will not be downloaded
4. Create a test group + copy the policies, and add 1 client
5. Create a package and export this package to this 1 client
6. Check the client, if the client is upgraded to the new 12 version, add a couple of more clients to the test group and upgrade these clients.
7. If all the clients are upgraded, move them back to the original group and add new clients to the test group.
8. Repeat step 7 for all clients

You can follow this steps but it is a best practise not to upgrade the clients all at once. Create a test group and add this package to the test group (don't forget to copy the policies). Add clients in steps to the test group.

This will not create high network load and it is still managed & controlled.

Hi Pete,

Yeah , GUPs are configured

It s only the upgrade process that worry me

Ok thanks for all the advices.

I ll use the upgrade process method.

Both docs will surely help me :)

For now i m fighting with diskspace ...

33Gb needed and ... 8 left on the harddrive !

Cleaned up LU downloads folder (had about 6gb in there, so i kept the last 2 month files), moved the database backup (10Gb) but still need space.

SEPM was configured to keep 30 lasts def to distribute to clients, and uses more than 30Gb for this.

I changed to 10, but can i clean up manually the folders under C:\Program Files\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager\Inetpub\content\{UniqueSID} ??

I see there's a file tha explains content but can i clean it up manually or should i use a tool ?

Thanks in advance !

And thanks again for the fast responses !!

EDIT : That me me think : in a group that relays on GUP, if the GUP is 12.x and others are still in 11.x (but upgrading at their speed), will it still work ? Should i upgrade GUP first then clients ? Clients first, GUPs after ?

Hi,

You can clean up manually the folders under C:\Program Files\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager\Inetpub\content\{UniqueSID}.

Please upgrade GUP first then other clients.

okay !

Thanks ... upgrade process running (when cleanup finishes)

Will tell you how it went :)

Soooo ...

Upgrade finished.

Evrything went well.

Added my licences into it but it says it will end in May 2012 ... not sure about this, i ve to check it.

I ve now to test the upgrade of a client to see that then upgrade GUPs and finaly my clients ...

Will keep you informed in case i ve anything weird.

Thanks again for your advices !

Ok migration of the server is done.

But now, no updates are comming, and .... I cannot create a new group ...

I think something went bad, but no idea of where to look for now (server is really instable, i'm rebooting it right now)

hi there,

when you finish upgrading SEPM,

you can establish an upgrade clients to latest version with SCCM, its perfect tool...

yeah i know, but unfortunatly we don't have sccm (too expensive for my boss).

I will use the built-in upgrade tool from Seymantec. It worked fine for upgrading my client from 11.0.4 to 11.0.5/11.0.6 and 11.0.7.

But for now, i need to make LU back opérationnal