SMA1000 General Release Firmware & Maintenance Updates, timelines associated & additional details

Firmware & Maintenance Update:

For SMA1000 Series Products, we have a Firmware version which is a long-haul stable General Release & a number of Maintenance Updates associated with it. (For Example – 12.4 is the Firmware version which is a General Release & 12.4.0/12.4.1/12.4.2 are Maintenance Updates corresponding to that release). Please refer this Table.

Each General Release Firmware is supported for 4 years. Each Maintenance Update is released annually (Q2/Q3 timeframe). It consists of all the previously released updates along with security updates, bug fixes & enhancements to current features. Each of these Maintenance Updates completely contains and replaces the one before it.

SonicWall recommends that customers always run their appliances on the latest General Release with all the latest Maintenance Updates & Security Updates applied. If any issues are reported & fix needs to be released, this will be delivered on top of the current/most-recent Maintenance Update. Once an annual Maintenance Update is released, the following Quarterly Security Update will be made available for both the current and previous Maintenance update.

Every Maintenance Update, goes through an extensive Beta Program. This Beta Program is conducted with an intention to familiarize our customers/partners of the new feature enhancements that are included as part of the update & also to get their feedback for further enhancements in the future.

Quarterly Security Update:

We also release quarterly security update (which is also known as Hotfix). In each of the quarterly security update we intend to include Vulnerability Fixes/Security Patches (as & when required) along with Bug Fixes. The existing quarterly security update model will apply to the current and previous Maintenance Update. Once we have a new Maintenance Update available, Quarterly Security Update corresponding to the previous Maintenance Update would be provided for one quarter post the release of the new Maintenance update, giving customers a period of time to test and transition.

Please Note: 

• All updates are roll-up, customers are advised to always apply the latest Maintenance Update with the latest Security Update available
• Maintenance Updates (E.g.: 12.4.0/12.4.1 etc.) are just updates/fixes/enhancements to the General Release Firmware (E.g.: 12.4)
• If a particular Maintenance Update has entered Limited Support Phase, no regular quarterly security update or any new code fixes would be provided for that version except under extreme circumstances & at SonicWall’s discretion.

TIP: Please find the detailed timeline corresponding to the SMA 1000 Firmware versions and Maintenance updates here

Parallel Pilots: 

SonicWall best practice advises customers to run a ‘Production Pilot’, in that there are always 2 live environments for users to connect to, following the “N+1”, “N” model at a minimum. This can of course be enhanced with “N+2” and “N-1” environments depending on the customers risk profile and SLA’s approaching 99.9999%.  Power users, not dedicated testers, should live and function in their respective “N+1” environments with the failback to “N” option, thereby providing rapid roll forward releases with high confidence of success.