McAfee M-1250 Upgrade Guide - Page 10

2 Managing a Heterogeneous Environment When would you need a heterogeneous environment? Notes: • A Manager must always be of the same or higher version than the corresponding Sensors. Therefore, a 5.1 Manager managing 6.0 Sensors is not a valid scenario. Similarly, the Central Manager must be of the same or higher version than the corresponding Managers. • Heterogeneous environments are supported only across two successive major versions. For example, a 6.0 Manager can manage Sensors on 5.1.x.x and 6.0.x.x but not Sensors on 4.1.x.x. Similarly, Central Manager 6.0 can manage 6.0 and 5.1 Managers but not 4.1 Managers. • In Network Security Platform 6.0, Central Managers and Managers support heterogeneous environments only from version 6.0.7.x and above. To use the information in this section, familiarize yourself with the following terms: • Homogeneous Manager environment: The Central Manager and all the Managers are of the same major version. • Heterogeneous Manager environment: At least one Manager is of a lesser major version than the Central Manager. For example, a 6.0 Central Manager that manages 6.0 and 5.1 Managers. • Homogeneous Sensor environment: The Manager and all the Sensors are of the same major version. • Heterogeneous Sensor environment: At least one Sensor is of a lesser major version than the Manager. For example, a 6.0 Manager managing 5.1 and 6.0 Sensors. Recall that a 6.0 Manager managing 4.1 Sensors is not a valid scenario. When would you need a heterogeneous environment? Support for managing a heterogeneous environment is typically for large deployments where upgrade of the Managers or the Sensors happens in phases. Consider a deployment of over a hundred Sensors that are on 5.1.x.x. As part of the upgrade process, you first upgrade the Manager as well as a few of the Sensors to 6.0. However, you may still need to make configuration changes and manage the 5.1 Sensors using the upgraded 6.0 Manager. You may also want to add some new 5.1 Sensors to the upgraded 6.0 Manager. These are possible with a Manager version that supports a heterogeneous Sensor environment. McAfee strongly advises that you use the heterogeneous support feature only as an interim arrangement until you upgrade all your Managers and Sensors to the latest version. This enables you to make use of the latest features in Network Security Platform. For example, in case of M-series Sensors, the SSL Decryption feature is available only from 6.0.x.x. So, in your heterogeneous Sensor environment, you can configure and manage the 5.1 and 6.0 M-series Sensors alike but only the 6.0 M-series Sensors can decrypt SSL traffic for inspection. In release 6.0, the names of some of the features have been changed for a better user-experience. Before you proceed further, familiarize yourself with these changes. See Reviewing the upgrade requirements, Upgrade Guide. See also Reviewing the upgrade requirements on page 31 Upgrade paths to a heterogeneous environment This section provides some example scenarios to help you understand the possible upgrade paths to a heterogeneous environment. Correlate these scenarios with yours to derive an upgrade path for your deployment. 10 McAfee® Network Security Platform 6.1 Upgrade Guide