How to perform an in place Windows upgrade on a DLP server

Products

• Data Loss Prevention Enforce
• Data Loss Prevention

Issue/Introduction

Below describes what is needed for DLP Enforce server when doing an in place upgrade of the host windows system.

Resolution

In theory, the “in place” upgrade should work however there is a concern that the upgrade has the potential to break dependencies such as .NET and visual C++. This is because during Windows upgrades the redistributables including their dependencies, are added and/or deprecated. If a Windows upgrade was not fully successful for some reason this could occur, however it may be easily repaired by simply re-downloading dependencies. . For example, we have seen OS upgrades that went smoothly however some failed to install “ALL” of the dependencies. This was easily resolved by redownloading C++ and .NET - and in one case manually adding the dependencies. A software called dependency walker may be an option to help resolve this particular issue.

We recommend the following:

• Attempt a single server upgrade first and confirm that the OS upgraded properly performing the following pre-upgrade tasks:
  • Take a backup of all the DLP config files, keystore, and make sure the incidents directory is clear. Complete instructions are under the "Backing up files stored on the file system on Windows" in the system maintenance guide,
  • Shut off DLP services.

If the DLP server fails to start, after the OS upgrade then we could try re-downloading redistributables and confirm what is missing with the dependency walker tool as explained above, otherwise we are likely looking at performing a disaster recover reinstall of DLP.