Upgrading to v18.x from v16.10

With the release of version 18.x, ExaVault appliances can now update themselves—no manual license uploads, no patching weekends, no surprises.

This upgrade brings three major improvements every customer will benefit from:

Automatic Security Updates: Critical OS and software updates now install automatically on a schedule you control—no need to manually re-image your server or remap disks. This ensures you’re always protected against the latest vulnerabilities, including several patched since the legacy 16.10 release.

License Keys That Just Work: With version 18.x, license key management is completely hands-free. Renewals for paid and Enterprise plans are now processed automatically in the background—no more uploading keys or contacting support to stay current.

SSL Certificates—Now Fully Managed: ExaVault now supports automatic registration and renewal of SSL certificates, reducing administrative overhead and eliminating expiration-related outages. Just turn it on and let it run.

Other Notable Improvements in 18.x

• Branding Consistency: All references to our old brand names Smartfile and Veristack have been replaced with ExaVault.

• Improved Document Viewer: The old PDF/document viewer has been replaced with a higher-quality viewer. It no longer supports annotations or e-signatures—please contact us before upgrading if you rely on those features.

• Streamlined Administration: The deprecated “Django” admin panel is no longer included or supported.

• Simpler User Management: User roles are now expressed as attributes on the User object. Existing users are migrated automatically.

• 2FA Security: SMS-based 2FA now uses and requires your own Twilio credentials.

If you're still on version 16.10, upgrading to 18.x is strongly recommended to maintain a secure, supported deployment. Major OS upgrades are still required approximately every four years—but for everything else, ExaVault will now keep itself up to date.

Performing The Upgrade

This upgrade will require downtime for your current production system. You need to power down your existing installation VM long enough to copy the data to the new VM.

As part of the name change from SmartFile to ExaVault, the upgrade process to v18.x involves renaming several databases and folders on disk. This is to ensure that your appliance will completely match a fresh installation and match the documentation. This part of the upgrade is performed automatically when you start the appliance later in the process.

Firewall Changes

The new version of ExaVault changes the passive port range that is used for FTP transfers. The change was made to align with and match Files.com, our parent company. You will need to update your firewall rules to open the port range from 40000 through 50000 for FTP passive ports.

Preparation

Prior to the upgrade, perform the following steps:

Optionally, remove old Activity Logs from the database. Older ExaVault servers with high levels of activity can end up storing a large amount of historical Activity Logs. During the upgrade from version 16.10 to 18.x, our migration script must perform several upgrades to the Activity Log database, and when the Activity Logs on a server are very large, this step can add a significant amount of time to the upgrade process.

If you want to reduce your migration timeframe and you do not need the oldest Activity Logs on your server, you can follow instructions for Deleting Old Activity prior to performing the upgrade to speed up the automated process.

Make a backup of the entire production VM including primary and secondary disks. While we've never seen anyone experience a failure following these upgrade instructions, taking a backup first provides a safeguard against the unforeseen interrupting a step that can't be recovered.

Save a copy of the network configuration locally. This will be needed to build a new netplan file. This configuration is likely found in the file /etc/network/interfaces

Launching The New VM Instance

Click here to download the ExaVault .ova Image for VMWare.

After obtaining the ExaVault .ova image, follow these steps to configure the VMWare Prerequisites, then continue the next step.

Configuring and Finalizing the Upgrade

Connect to the appliance using your VM console or via SSH. The VM uses a nonstandard port for SSH, so you must specify port 10022 for an SSH connection.

Execute the following commands in a shell to configure and finalize the upgrade to version 18.x. By default, you'll connect using the admin user, so we've added sudo to the commands because they require administrator access to your server.

Create the /data dir:

sudo mkdir -p /data

Remount the existing disk. Replace the device with your device name:

sudo exavaultmount -o remount --destination /data --type xfs --source /dev/sdb1

Start the application:

sudo exavaultctl -o start

Allow a few minutes for your appliance to upgrade all database names.

If anything fails to start, check the logs for errors:

sudo docker logs -n 10 -f exavault_api_1

Once the appliance is started, the exavault-admin-dashboard container should be running. Use a web browser to access the appliance manager on port 9002. Access the configuration page and save your configuration.

After the Upgrade

Enabling Automatic Updates

After performing to upgrade to v18.x, Premium customers can enable the Auto-Update option in the appliance manager.

After the migration is complete, when you first access the Configuration Page in Appliance Manager, the page will show that Auto-Update enabled and the daily update time is 3:00 UTC. You must save the page in order to enable automatic updates. After you save the configuration, restart the appliance.

If you do not access the Configuration Page in Appliance Manager and save the settings to enable Auto-Update, automatic updates will not work for your ExaVault installation.

Enabling Automatic SSL Certificate Management

Premium customers can enable SSL Certificate Management, which means you'll never have to worry about expiring certificates again. When Automatic SSL Certificates are enabled, ExaVault will automatically provision new certificates from Let's Encrypt and activate them as needed.

After your upgrade to v18.x is complete, log into the Appliance Manager.

On the Configuration Page, make sure the Hostname resolves to your appliance's IP address. If you update the configuration, restart the appliance from the Home Page.

Make sure that port 80 to your appliance's IP is not blocked by a firewall, so that the automatic process can verify connection.

If your Hostname is correct, visit the SSL Certificate Page, and change the option at the top of the page to Automatic. Nothing else is needed for automatic certificate updates.

When a new certificate is created, your appliance's proxy and SFTP/FTP services are restarted to automatically apply the updates.