Upgrade Two B Series Appliances in a Failover Configuration

 

BeyondTrust recommends scheduling maintenance windows during low traffic hours.

There are two alternatives for upgrading in a failover environment: synchronous upgrade and asynchronous upgrade.

Synchronous Upgrade of Two B Series Appliances in a Failover Relationship

With synchronous updating, the primary B Series Appliance is updated first and maintains its role as primary. This method does involve some downtime; it is recommended for simple deployments and scenarios that will not suffer from being offline during the update.

  • Benefit: No failover event.
  • Drawback: Longer production site downtime.

Asynchronous Upgrade of Two B Series Appliances in a Failover Relationship

With asynchronous updating, the backup B Series Appliance is updated first and then assumes the role of primary. This method has minimal downtime; it is recommended for larger deployments and scenarios that rely on maintaining solid uptime. Some complexity is involved, as the network may have to be modified in order to fail over to the backup B Series Appliance.

  • Benefit: Minimal production down time.
  • Drawback: Requires failover activity.

Considerations

  1. Select the failover upgrade alternative that best fits your downtime and continuity needs.
  2. Schedule two separate maintenance windows in which to complete the upgrade.
  3. Expect the upgrade process to take the same amount of time on both B Series Appliances.
  4. Plan an interim period between the two maintenance windows adequate enough to confirm the new software version in your production environment but brief enough to minimize the exposure of temporarily not having a failover configuration.