I saw the announcement of the availability of a virtual appliance for Netwrix Auditor. If we’re already running Auditor, is it possible to migrate our existing configuration and data over to that virtual appliance once it is deployed?
Hello Jason,
Welcome to the Netwrix Community!
Great question—if you already have the virtual appliance in place, the best approach is to perform a standard upgrade by downloading the Auditor 10.8 upgrade package from the Customer Portal. Re-downloading the entire virtual appliance would essentially start you over from scratch, which is typically only necessary for new customers or those looking to redeploy on a clean server and SQL instance.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the upgrade process.
Michael Purdin
Netwrix Technical Support Manager
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I also didn’t know virtual appliance was an option. We’re just manually installing on a Windows server, I believe.
Some questions
What OS is the virtual appliance?
It seems like it still needs manual version updates, SQL, etc?
How is storage set up for allowing long storage of audit logs?
Where can we learn more about migration options?
Amanda W,
Welcome back to the Community!
The Netwrix Auditor Virtual Appliance is available in two versions—Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022—and is offered in both vSphere and Hyper-V formats.
That said, if you already have Auditor up and running, it’s best to continue upgrading as you’ve done previously. The virtual appliance is primarily intended for customers who are either evaluating Netwrix Auditor or deploying it for the first time. It includes Microsoft SQL Express, which comes with several limitations compared to the full version of Microsoft SQL Server. The settings for the storage are the default ones for Auditor which is 6 months for the database and 120 months for the Long Term Archive, which is located on the D drive of the virtual server. These settings can be changed.
For existing customers, the virtual appliance would only be beneficial in specific scenarios—such as wanting to start fresh or if you’re already using SQL Express and looking to migrate to a new server. In those cases, it might make sense to deploy the appliance and perform a migration, especially if you’re experiencing performance issues or running an older operating system.
Let me know if you have any questions or need assistance planning a migration.
Michael Purdin
Netwrix Technical Support Manager
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Thanks Michael. I appreciate that info.