We have been using cnMaestro for almost two years now and finally took the plunge this week to update the SMs and APs via cnMaestro. Previously we used CNUT on the old Canopy system and for the new PMP450 system.
We are up to a bit over 800 total devices (AP and SM) and everything upgraded flawlessly and at record time! So I wanted to thank the cnMaestro team for the great job on this product. I know there have been a few things I have complained about on the forums, but overall we are very happy with cnMaestro and the support we get from Cambium.
I do have a question regarding the order of upgrade. In the training class from a few years ago, we were told upgrade the SMs first, then the AP. cnMaestro seems to default to update AP first, then SMs. Which is the recommended way?
On the cloud version of cnMaestro it seems to default to updating SM's first and then AP's... in any case you can change it.... and yes, it's better to update SM's first and then update the AP.
Always it is better to upgrade AP first, because after upgrade if SM's are not registering back ( ideally it should never happen - worst case due to some bug) you are in trouble, it is always easy to roll back just AP alone.
Always it is better to upgrade AP first, because after upgrade if SM's are not registering back ( ideally it should never happen - worst case due to some bug) you are in trouble, it is always easy to roll back just AP alone.
Depends on if you think the manufacturer releases buggy firmware :-) There are many instances of (cambium) firmware requiring that the far side/client/SM/slave be updated first. Off the top of my head, PMP450 15.2 firmware which deprecated DES and (kinda) forced AES encryption... required the SM to be updated first. We always do a test on a lab setup or very small easy to get to sector first before doing a mass roll-out. I recommend this to everyone. The second factor is how much do you trust the manufacture? I really cannot think of an instance where Cambium has released a firmware where upgrading the far end has broken the link and caused a truck roll. If the release notes require the far side to be updated, I tend to stick with their opinion. I guess read the release notes... and follow what they say, in a lab or controlled environement, and then decide to wholesale deploy... my two cents...
Telemar, yes, offline SMs can be upgraded when they reconnect by enabling the "Retry skipped/offline device(s) on reconnect" option when creating the Software Update job. See Eric's screenshot a few posts up.
