Tag Archives: Upgrade

Important information for users of Brightmail Gateway Virtual Edition

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Here’s some information you should be aware of before upgrading to the forthcoming Symantec Brightmail Gateway 8.0.2 release.

//Ian

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Notification type: New version will be available – Important information to read prior to updating on VMware environments
Product: Symantec Brightmail Gateway
Version: 8.0.1
Patch: 8.0.2
Other Hardware/Software/Environment: VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 or prior with virtual LSI SCSI controller

Overview:
Action required for customers using Virtual Edition of Symantec Brightmail Gateway and VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 or prior with virtual LSI SCSI controller. Prior to updating to 8.0.2., Symantec is strongly recommending that customers assure themselves that they are current with VMware 3.5 or later prior to upgrading to Brightmail Gateway 8.0.2 to prevent loss of functionality.  An alternative workaround is provided if VMware 3.5 is not available.

Recommendation:
Symantec encourages all customers to update Brightmail Gateway to 8.0.2. The update is available via the Control Center or through the Command Line Interface (SSH).
For more information about all changes in this update, please copy and paste the URL below in a browser:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-gate.nsf/…

If you have deployed Brightmail Gateway as a virtual appliance and are using a VMware ESX Server environment with a release prior to 3.5update4, you must upgrade the virtual environment to 3.5update 4 or later prior to performing the software update. Failure to do so will result in complete loss of functionality for your Brightmail installation.

This notice is applicable to the following customer configuration;

– VMware Server Version 3.0.2 or prior
AND
– Using the virtual LSI SCSI controller

If you have the above combination and do not take one of the actions specified below, Symantec Brightmail Gateway will not function after updating to version 8.0.2. A kernel panic will occur after rebooting the virtual appliance after the update. The following options are available to prevent this issue:

* The Primary recommended method is to upgrade to VMware ESX Server Version 3.5.

Upgrading typically requires down time and a reboot for the virtual machine in which Symantec Brightmail Gateway runs. These steps may also be necessary for other virtual machines on the same physical computer. Before upgrading, perform the following tasks on Symantec Brightmail Gateway Virtual Edition:

1. Back up your existing data.
2. Check for a running LDAP synchronization cycle.
3. Check for a running Scanner replication cycle.
4. Halt incoming messages to drain all message queues.

These steps are similar to preparing for a software update. See “Running software update” in this document for more information about these steps.
For more information about upgrading, copy and paste the URL below into a Web browser:
https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_upgrade_guide.pdf  

* If you are unable to upgrade to the latest version of VMware ESX Server, you can alternately change your virtual machine to use the BusLogic SCSI controller. For more information about changing the SCSI controller configuration, copy and paste the URL below into a Web browser:
http://www.vmware.com/support/vc14/doc/c14chgscsicontrol11.html

* For the most current information about this issue, copy and paste the URL below into a Web browser:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-gate.nsf/docid/2009051416195754

Symantec Brightmail Gateway 8.0.1-7 released

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I’m delighted to announce the release of our first update to the Brightmail Gateway 8.0 release.
Version 8.0.1-7 should be available for direct upgrade via your Brightmail Gateway UI or CLI right away and customers can upgrade from any previous production build directly to this release. 
Note:  If you participated in any of our previous beta programs, you CANNOT upgrade from a beta release of Brightmail Gateway.

What does this release include?

  1. Language Packs:
    This release includes translated help and documentation in: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.  The Getting Started guide is also translated into Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, European Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish.
  2. New SMTP setting “Do not advertise 8BITMIME”:
    We’ve seen a few problems in the wild where, whilst Brightmail Gateway is able to handle messages containing 8-bit MIME data, if it tries to delier these messages  to an MTA that cannot handle 8-bit MIME, the contents became somewhat garbled.  This mostly affected hiascii character sets.  Enabling this new setting forces Brightmail Gateway to accept only 7-bit MIME, which inturn makes the sending MTA pass only 7-bit MIME data to us.
  3. Accepted inbound mail connections limit removed:
    With the 8.0.0 release, Brightmail Gateway did not use any entries after the first 100 in the “Accept inbound mail connections only from the following IP addresses and domains” list.  This has now been corrected.
  4. HTTP Access to control centre:
    Prior to upgrading to 8.0.0, some customers used plain HTTP to access the control centre.  After upgrading, this HTTP access was disabled automatically.  Additionally, the http CLI command did not function.  With the 8.0.1 release the functionality has been restored.  If you wish to access the control centre over HTTP, run the http on command from the CLI and restart the Control Centre.
  5. Messages remaining in delivery queue with SMTP error codes 421, 450, or 451:
    Under some circumstances, it was possible for the Brightmail Gateway connection timeout limit to be reached before all of a recipient domains MX records had been attempted.  For 8.0.1, this has been resolved.
  6. Large increase in messages reported by the control centre statistics:
    Under very unlikely circumnstances, it was possible for a short lived mail loop to exist between two of the Brightmail Gateway interfaces.  This would have manifested itself by way of showing an inflated number of messages sent and recieved under the control centre statistics.  Further redundancy has been added to Brightmail Gateway to avoid this problem.
  7. Virus definitions configured for download on weekends:
    If you perform a new installation of Brightmail Gateway, automatics virus definition updates are enabled every 10 minutes.  Previously, LiveUpdate was not set to run on Saturday and Sundays.  After upgrading to 8.0.1, you are stronly advised to verify your LiveUpdate settings as an upgrade will NOT change any schedules to remedy this.
  8. Ethernet interfaces on the same subnet:
    Previously, if you had two NICs on the same subnet, the MAC address for one NIC may have been cached by DNS and used for both addresses.  This may have resuled in mail delivery issues if one of the NICs was not working.  This issue has been addressed for NEW installations of Brightmail Gateway.  If you have this set up (2 NICs on one subnet) in an existing version of Brightmail Gateway, upgrading alone will not address this issue and you are advised to contact Technical Support for assistance.

Any questions?  Let me know!

//ian