I am learning the management of this device even though it has been in service for 18 months.
I am still new to a lot of things.
We are running TZ400 Firewall for a small business with 20 devices on the ‘in house’ wired network.
We have 500/50 internet access through a cable modem. We installed it 18 months ago.
It has been very reliable and kept us safe so far.
We renewed to a 3 year license but we have not updated the firmware yet.
We are running 6.5.1.3-12N.
What is the latest Stable Firmware we should be running, and how often should the Firmware be updated ?
I see a few Maintenance releases but not any General releases.
Thank you,
Peter …
Log into your MySonicWall.com dashboard, and register the SonicWall. From here, you’ll also be able to locate and download the latest firmware.
Download, log into the admin panel of the TZ400 (web admin), and then upload the firmware. I’d also suggest activating the Cloud Sync, now that you registered the MySonicWall account.
I personally don’t fear the firmware upgrade process. Of the multiples and years of managing TZxxx devices, I’ve not had one fail a upgrade. I’ve had slow upgrades and upgrades that seemed like it went too fast. But all have been non-bricking events.
SonicWALL has had some issues with security bugs like other Network Firewall Appliances. So do updates. I had a TZ205 that had the SSL certs flaw/problem where the CAs had to reissue new keys long before expected. SonicWALL even updated firmware for a old TZ2xx. It surely helped because it fixed a browser access issue, where one could only access the web admin using a old IE11 browser. Chrome/FireFox wouldn’t allow access to the web admin page.
But this isn’t a problem for you. Just be sure all is registered, and keep your firmware up to date.
One of those Maintenance releases, may include a Global VPN Client fix.
SonicWALL makes a solid product. In the past decade, I’ve deployed many- around 12-15 per year and support them every day. I’ve only had two firmware updates go bad. They were on the same model, different devices. I chalked that up to a bad batch. Other than that, rock solid. The other comments are right on. Make a backup, reboot first if you can. You’ll be fine.
I have several TZ300, 400, 500 and 600 out in the field. I’ve either left some units on 6.5.1.3-12N or updated to 6.5.4.7-83n which is a general release.
-there is a maintenance version out 6.5.4.8-89n. I’ve applied it to one or two units and haven’t had any issues.
-Quick heads up - we were given the option to renew our 3 year AGSS but my boss has decided to just purchase a new unit with agss and it works out to about the same price. we’ve moved some clients from a TZ300 after the 3 year expires to a TZ370, 470, 570 or 670 depending on their needs.
Thank you for all your responses.
I think I will wait until Saturday morning to do the reboot, backup and Firmware Update.
In case it goes sideways, I will have time to correct things.
Pete…
Thank you for taking the time to help people do the simple things to prevent issues.
PS Remember to also save a local copy of your current firmware, should you wish to downgrade. Settings exported goes together with the firmware revision, which must be the same or newer.
Make sure you do a cloud backup, export settings, and a local backup which will more than cover you just in case it goes sideways. Also, if it’s been up for a long time I like to restart it prior to performing the upgrade. However, I echo jftitan that the updates are non-events.