Upgrades

Recommendation

Perform non planned upgrades only if you are having serious issues with your current version of the product or you are told to do so by the support team. In all other cases continue using your current version and plan routine upgrade at a later date. Beware upgrade process is error prone and fragile due to the complexity of the application and a lot of integration points with the operating system so it does not always go smoothly. Backup before upgrading!

Note, here we will assume you are using the Web Safety virtual appliance. If you have manually installed the application on your own hardware please adjust the steps accordingly.

Before any upgrade please read the release notes for the new version. There might be some major breaking changes in the new version that will require careful planning during pre and post update phase. Then to upgrade your old version of Web Safety virtual appliance to the latest version, follow these steps.

Back up Configuration from the Old Version

In order to backup your current configuration, on your old Web Safety instance, navigate to Admin UI / Dashboard / Tools / Backup and click the Backup button as shown on the following screenshot.

Browser will download the backup file with old configuration.

Be sure to note any other specifics of the old appliance, for example its IP address, DNS settings, Captive Portal settings, etc. Then, shutdown the old virtual appliance but do not remove it yet.

Deploy a New Version of Web Safety

Next, deploy the latest version of Web Safety virtual appliance and boot it up. After boot up completes, navigate to the Admin UI / Dashboard / Tools / Restore, select the zip file created on the previous step, select appropriate checkboxes and click the Restore button as shown on the following screenshot.

Note, it is advisable to first check the Only test import of settings checkbox and then, after you are sure the import will succeed, clear that checkbox and perform the import again.

Adjust Configuration as Required

After restore completes, click Save and Restart button in the top right corner of the Admin UI and re-configure network settings of the new virtual appliance to match those of the old appliance.

It is also recommended to re-upload the Decryption Certificate from the zip file as a separate step to correctly re-initialize Squid's internal storage of SSL mimicked certificates and re-enable the HTTPS decryption if required.

You might also need to test Active Directory integration again and enable Kerberos/NTLM and Basic LDAP proxy authentication schemes or Captive Portal if these were configured before.

Decommission the Old Virtual Appliance

After making sure the new virtual appliance works as expected, you may decide to decommission and remove the old virtual appliance.

Limitations of the Upgrade

The following upgrade limitations are currently present.

• Unfortunately, we cannot upgrade the generated traffic reports. But when upgrading from Web Safety 9.0+, you can manually download Squid logs from the old appliance and upload them into /var/log/squid folder on the new appliance. The reports will then be completely rebuilt next day. Note, that logs from earlier version of Web Safety are not compatible and cannot be re-imported by the traffic monitoring module.
• If you have customized Captive Portal pages then these are lost during upgrade. You would need to customize Captive Portal pages again.
• Squid authentication settings are only partially upgraded. Please manually reconfigure Active Directory integration and enable Kerberos/NTLM/Basic LDAP authenticators if those were configured before.
• Credentials for the admin user in UI are reverted to default. All users added to UI are lost.
• You may need to manually re-import existing license key, Decryption Certificate and keytab file into UI again.