Upgrade your XProtect VMS

Read about upgrade requirements (see Upgrade requirements and considertations) including backup of the SQL Server databases before you start the actual upgrade.

If your system is a Single Computer system, you can install the new software on top of the existing installation.

In a XProtect Interconnect or Milestone Federated Architecture system, you must start upgrading the central site and afterward the remote sites.

When you start the installation, you lose the failover recording server functionality (see Failover recording server ).

With this release, the log server has been replaced by Server Logs, which use OpenTelemetry to collect and forward log data. To ensure your system sends logs to the new logging solution after the upgrade, see Migrating the log server.

In a distributed system, perform the upgrade in this order:

1. Upgrade the management server with the Custom option in the installer (see Install some system components (Custom option)).

2. Specify SQL Server and database. Decide whether to keep the SQL Server database that you are already using and to keep the existing data in the database.

   Milestone XProtect cannot be installed or upgraded using an MS-SQL database enrolled in a database mirroring session or an availability group because some operations cannot run on this kind of database. Remove the database from the availability group or mirroring session during the installation or upgrade. After the installation or upgrade is complete, the database can be enrolled in a mirroring session or an availability group again.

3. Upgrade failover recording servers. From your management server's download web page (controlled by the Download Manager), install Recording Server.

   If you plan to enable encryption on the failover recording servers and you want to retain the failover functionality, upgrade the failover recording server without encryption and enable it after you have upgraded the recording servers.

   At this point the failover server functionality works again.

4. If you plan to enable encryption from the recording servers or failover recording servers to the clients and it is important that the clients can retrieve data during the upgrade, upgrade all clients and services that retrieve data streams from the recording servers before you upgrade the recording servers. These clients and services are:
• XProtect Smart Client
• Management Client
• Management Server
• XProtect Mobile server
• XProtect Event Server
• Milestone Open Network Bridge
• Sites that retrieve data streams from the recording server through XProtect Interconnect
• Some MIP SDK third-party integrations

5. Upgrade the recording servers. You can install recording servers using the installation wizard (see Install XProtect components through Download Manager ) or silently (see Install a recording server silently). The advantage of a silent install is that you can do it remotely.

   If you enable encryption on the management server, the recording servers are offline until they are upgraded, and you have enabled encryption to the management server.

Continue these steps for the other sites in your system.