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Upgrade the firmware on your ExtraHop appliance

The following procedure shows you how to upgrade your ExtraHop appliance to the latest firmware release. While the firmware upgrade process is similar across all ExtraHop appliances, some appliances have additional considerations or steps that you must address before you install the firmware in your environment. If you need assistance with your upgrade, contact ExtraHop Support.

Pre-upgrade checklist

Here are some important considerations and requirements about upgrading ExtraHop appliances.

  • If you have multiple types of ExtraHop appliances, you must upgrade them in the following order:
    1. Command appliance
    2. Discover appliances
    3. Explore appliances
    4. Trace appliances
  • If you have a Command appliance, apply the following guidance:
    • For large Command appliance deployments (managing 50,000 devices or more), reserve a minimum of one hour to perform the upgrade.
    • The Command appliance firmware version must be greater than or equal to the firmware version of all connected appliances.
  • If you have Explore appliances, apply the following guidance:
    • You must halt the ingest of records from Command and Discover appliances before upgrading. If you are upgrading from a firmware version prior to 7.4, temporarily remove any connected Explore appliances, or alternatively, disable triggers that commit records and disable the automatic flow records setting.

      If you are upgrading from firmware version 7.4 or later, disable record ingest on the Explore cluster.

      You must re-enable these settings after all nodes in the Explore cluster are upgraded.

    • You must upgrade all Explore nodes in an Explore cluster. The cluster will not function correctly if nodes are on dissimilar firmware versions.
      Important:The message Could not determine ingest status on some nodes and Error appear on the Cluster Data Management page in the Admin UI of the upgraded nodes until all nodes in the cluster are upgraded. These errors are expected and can be ignored.

Upgrade the firmware

  1. Download the firmware for the appliance from the ExtraHop Customer Portal to your computer.
  2. Log into the Admin UI on the ExtraHop appliance.
  3. In the Appliance Settings section, click Firmware.
  4. Click Upgrade.
  5. On the Upgrade Firmware page, select one of the following options:
    • To upload firmware from a file, click Choose File, navigate to the .tar file you want to upload, and click Open.
    • To upload firmware from a URL, click retrieve from URL instead and then type the URL in the Firmware URL field.
  6. If you do not want to automatically restart the appliance after the firmware is installed, clear the Automatically restart appliance after installation checkbox.
  7. Click Upgrade.
    The ExtraHop appliance initiates the firmware upgrade. You can monitor the progress of the upgrade with the Updating progress bar. The appliance restarts after the firmware is installed.
  8. If you did not choose to automatically restart the appliance, click Reboot to restart the system.
    After the firmware update is installed successfully, the ExtraHop appliance displays the version number of the new firmware on the Admin UI.
    Note:Your browser might time out after 5 minutes of inactivity. Refresh the browser page if the update appears incomplete.

    If the browser session times out before the ExtraHop appliance is able to complete the update process, you can try the following connectivity tests to confirm the status up the upgrade process:

    • Ping the appliance from the command line of another appliance or client workstation.
    • From the Admin UI on a Command appliance, view the appliance status on the Manage Connected Appliances page.
    • Connect to the appliance through the iDRAC interface.
  9. If you disconnected any Explore appliances from Command and Discover appliances, make sure to reconnect them. If you disabled any triggers, automatic flow records, or disabled record ingest, make sure to re-enable those settings.
Published 2021-01-20 16:46