Focus

VM-Series Deployment Guide

Upgrade the VM-Series Model

Table of Contents

Upgrade the VM-Series Model

The licensing process for the VM-Series firewall uses the UUID and the CPU ID to generate a unique serial number for each VM-Series firewall. Hence, when you generate a license, the license is mapped to a specific instance of the VM-Series firewall and cannot be modified.

Use the instructions in this section, if you are:

Migrating from an evaluation license to a production license.
Upgrading the model to allow for increased capacity. For example you want to upgrade from the VM-100 to the VM-300 model.

A capacity upgrade restarts some critical processes on the firewall. An HA configuration is recommended to minimize service disruption; to upgrade the capacity on a HA pair, see Upgrade the VM-Series Model in an HA Pair.
In a private or public cloud deployment, if your firewall is licensed with the BYOL option, you must deactivate your VM before you change the instance type or VM type and apply the license again on the firewall after you complete the model or instance upgrade. When you change the instance type, because the firewall has a new UUID and CPU ID, the existing license will no longer be valid.

Allocate additional hardware resources to your VM-Series firewall.
Before initiating the capacity upgrade, you must verify that enough hardware resources are available to the VM-Series firewall to support the new capacity. The process for assigning additional hardware resources differs on each hypervisor.
To check the hardware requirements for your new VM-Series model, see VM-Series Models.
Retrieve the license deactivation API key from the Customer Support portal.
1. Log in to the Customer Support Portal.
  
  Make sure that you are using the same account that you used to register the initial license.
2. From the menu on the left, select AssetsAPI Key Management.
3. Copy the API key.
On the firewall, use the CLI to install the API key copied in the previous step.
request license api-key set key <key>
Enable the firewall to Verify Update Server identity on DeviceSetupService.
Commit your changes. Ensure that you have a locally-configured user on the firewall. Panorama pushed users might not be available after the deactivation if the configuration exceeds the non-licensed PA-VM objects limit.
Upgrade the capacity.
Select DeviceLicensesUpgrade VM Capacity and then activate your licenses and subscriptions in one of the following ways:
- Retrieve license keys from license server—Use this option if you activated your license on the Customer Support portal.
- Manually upload license key—Use this option if your firewall does not have connectivity to the Customer Support portal. In this case, you must download a license key file from the support site on an Internet connected computer and then upload to the firewall.
- Use an authorization code—Use this option to upgrade the VM-Series capacity using an authorization code for licenses that have not been previously activated on the support portal. When prompted, enter the Authorization Code and then click OK.
Verify that your firewall is licensed successfully.
On the DeviceLicenses page, verify that the license was successfully activated.

Upgrade the VM-Series for NSX Without Disrupting Traffic

Upgrade the VM-Series Model in an HA Pair