Messaging Gateway

I need to upgrade from Mail Security for SMTP to Brightmail Gateway. I want to use an appliance. I am having trouble figuring out if I order Part # 20038117 Brightmail Gateway Appliance 8360, what version of brightmail comes on it. If it's Version 8, is it upgradeable to version 9? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hmmm. Your salesman should be able to answer these questions.  About a year ago mine came with 7.x on it.  There is both a command line and web interface method of updating the product.  The GUI will alert you to when a new version is available.

I recommend that you also make OS Restore CD-ROMs.  I'm able to download these from the FileConnect website by providing my license # from the e-mail symantec sends you when you order (not the .SLF licence file).

The appliances are Dell 1900 and 2900 series boxes (at least they were 6 months ago).  Depending on how your company does hardware maintanence you might find it cheaper to buy your own hardware, VMware and run the SBG software in a VM on 3rd party hardware.

I use VMs for my test environment.

Hi Bruce,

Whatever hardware you purchase from Symantec you'll be able to upgrade to the latest version.  As mentioned you also have the option to download the iso image from Symantec and just apply that so that you just start with the latest version and not have to go through the upgrade process.

Hope that helps,

Kevin

Symantec Brightmail Gateway (SBG) version 9 was made available for upgrade thru our software repository on Mar 10th, 2010.  If you bought/ordered your appliance before that date, it most likely will come with version 8. 

The Site Setup Wizard that runs when you first login to the Control Center gives you an option to upgrade the appliance to the latest release, but due to some architectural changes, any version prior to 8.0.3-11 must first be upgraded to 8.0.3-11 before it can be upgraded to version 9.

If the appliance you receive does not contain version 9, then in order to save time, as already suggested, it's best to download version 9 from FileConnect, burn an ISO CD and OSRESTORE the appliance with version 9.  Here is the KB article about OSRESTORing an appliance:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-gate.nsf/docid/2005040414130363

Regards,

Adnan