Upgrading with central managers and aggregators

Minimize disruptions to your Guardium® environment by following a top-down upgrade approach.

This means first upgrading one high-level system and then upgrading the systems or agents that report to it, then upgrading the next high-level system and the systems or agents that report to it, and so on. This approach minimizes the impact of operating a mixed-version Guardium environment.

A top-down approach is necessary because an upgraded aggregator can aggregate data from older releases, but an older aggregator cannot aggregate data from collectors on newer releases. Similarly, an upgraded central manager can manage units running older releases, but the managed units are not fully functional until they are upgraded to match the central manager.

To avoid these issues, upgrade a central manager before upgrading any of its managed units. If you have multiple central managers, first upgrade one central manager and then upgrade its managed units before going on to upgrade the next central manager and its managed units.

Similarly, upgrade an aggregator before upgrading any units that export data to it. If you have several aggregators, first upgrade one aggregator and then upgrade the collectors that report to it before going on to upgrade the next aggregator and its collectors.

Finally, upgrade a collector before upgrading the S-TAPs registered to it. Upgrade one collector and all the S-TAPs registered to it before going on to upgrade the next collector and its S-TAPs.

Use failover collectors to ensure that the data collection from S-TAPs is not interrupted during the upgrade process.

This is the most efficient approach for establishing compatible systems in each branch of your environment.