XV. VigorACS and VigorConnect
ExpiredUse VigorACS 3 to Schedule and Automate Firmware Upgrades
VigorACS 3 provides an easy and standardised interface to upgrade firmware on all of your DrayTek Vigor routers, wireless APs and switches, installed in any location.
There are two ways in which you can update firmware through VigorACS 3:
Automate & Schedule Firmware Upgrades for Multiple CPEs |
Automate firmware upgrades on a group of CPE at a selected time, for instance occurring overnight, immediately or outside of working hours. With powerful filtering and selection capabilities to upgrade DrayTek products of selected model(s) only, in selected groups or with names matching specified criteria. |
Upgrade Firmware on a single CPE |
Use VigorACS to upgrade the firmware of one CPE (router, AP or switch) remotely, just like upgrading the firmware through the CPE's web interface, without the hassle of accessing the device directly. See this article to learn how to use VigorACS 3 to send firmware to a single CPE with minimal preparation required. |
Performing Firmware Upgrades through VigorACS requires a user account with Administrator, Group Administrator or Root privileges. Operator and View Only Operator accounts cannot perform firmware upgrades.
This upgrade method is available to ACS cloud standard and cloud / self-hosted premium servers.
VigorACS premium cloud / self-hosted also provides a more advanced [Provisioning] > [Firmware Upgrade] system. This allows for larger scale and more complex firmware upgrade methods, applying to whole networks or groups, with advanced filtering. See section 6.3.4 of the VigorACS 3 manual for more details, or get in touch with your VigorACS support contact.
Upload Firmware to VigorACS 3
To prepare for a larger scale firmware upgrade, it can be very helpful to first upload the firmware into your VigorACS 3 server's file storage. This is managed through the [File Manager], which stores firmware files and is integrated with the DrayTek FTP for an easier download process.
From the File Manager toolbar, you can click on the "DrayTek FTP" link, which will load the file structure of DrayTek's available firmware updates, from there you can select .zip files, which ACS will then download and extract into its filesystem, ready for use.
Log into VigorACS and go to the [Maintenance] > [File Manager] menu.
In the File Manager, select the User Group that the firmware will be accessible to. It's recommended to upload firmware into the SharedFirmware directory, click on the SharedFirmware directory to go into it.
In the SharedFirmware directory, click the Upload button to select a file from your computer to upload to VigorACS:
With the file selected, click Apply to start the upload process.
Once the progress counter has completed, the firmware will be available in VigorACS 3 to send out to CPEs.
Creating a Firmware Upgrade Job
To have VigorACS 3 perform automated upgrades of firmware, or to schedule the upgrade process for a specific time window (1am to 4am, for instance) or date, it's necessary to create a firmware upgrade job. This is a task in VigorACS defining which CPEs will receive which firmware, at what time of day.
When upgrading firmware remotely with multiple CPEs, it is recommended to perform a firmware upgrade on a single unit through VigorACS first, before increasing the scope.
This serves two purposes, primarily it allows you to check that the firmware loads without issue on the target CPE and does not cause problems with your network configuration or requirements. Additionally, upgrading one unit puts the firmware into VigorACS's File Manager system, for easy re-use.
To create a firmware upgrade job, go to [Maintenance] > [Firmware Upgrade]:
In the [Maintenance] > [Firmware Upgrade] section, you can see the status of previous firmware upgrade jobs for each User Group. If your account has permission to manage multiple groups, make sure to select the correct User Group from the drop down list before proceeding.
Once the correct User Group is selected, click + Add to start setting up a firmware upgrade task.
Create a Firmware Upgrade Job
In the Firmware Upgrade Job Settings, there are a few options to configure before the upgrade can proceed:
| Item | Description |
Name |
This is an identifier for the firmware upgrade job. Enter something that identifies this job item or the devices it's applicable to. |
Status |
This controls whether VigorACS will perform the upgrade job during the specified time window. This can be set to Disable initially and changed to Enable later. If this option is set to Enable and the Time is set to Now, the firmware upgrade job will start immediately upon clicking the Save button. |
Upgrade Time |
Select Now to apply the job immediately upon saving with the Status set to Enable. To schedule the upgrade, select Scheduled. Click on the Start and End times to select the hours then minutes of the day (2 stages of clock selection) that the Firmware Upgrade Job will use as its time window. The precise time of firmware upgrades will most commonly occur when the CPE performs its 'periodic inform' with VigorACS, which will usually occur every 15 minutes (900 seconds default). It is recommended to have a long enough time window that all devices can perform their periodic inform, in this example the window was 45 minutes. To save a Firmware Upgrade Job with the Scheduled option, both the Start and End times must be set and validated with a green tick. |
Date |
If the upgrade job is scheduled, select the date from the pop-up calendar to confirm the date that the firmware upgrade job will be carried out. |
Apply Firmware |
Click on this to open the firmware selection window: |
In the Firmware Selection window, navigate to the firmware that was uploaded to VigorACS 3. Click on it to select the firmware.
Selecting Devices to Upgrade
To select which CPEs will have the firmware upgrade applied, you can manually select CPEs or Networks in VigorACS 3 from the Device to Upgrade section of the firmware upgrade job.
Alternatively, we can filter the displayed CPEs, which may be necessary on larger servers, to limit the displayed devices to only the CPE types that the firmware can be applied to. To start filtering the Device list, click on the filter icon:
Clicking the 'filter' icon will expand out these options:
| Filter Option | Description |
Device Name |
Enter a full or partial name for the device, or a prefix/suffix used for a set of CPEs, to filter for only CPEs matching the specified text string. |
MAC Address |
Specify a MAC address to locate a single CPE. |
Model |
Select a specific DrayTek model from the list of devices. To select all Vigor 2865 routers, select Vigor 2865*. In this example, only the Vigor 2865Lac is selected, so only Vigor 2865 routers with the Lac suffix are displayed in the Device list once this is applied. |
Firmware Version |
Select from the drop-down list to only view DrayTek CPEs with the selected firmware version. |
Modem Version |
Select from the drop-down list to only view DrayTek CPEs with the selected modem code. If selected, this will only display Vigor routers with integrated DSL modems. |
Click Apply to apply the filter and display CPEs matching only the specified parameters. In this example, we can now easily locate and select both Vigor 2865Lac routers connected to VigorACS:
With all of the settings now configured and green validation ticks next to each item, click Save to save the Firmware Upgrade Job. If the Job Status is currently Enabled, the Firmware Upgrade Job will begin at the time specified, or immediately if you selected Now as the upgrade time.
The VigorACS server will instruct CPEs to perform this task when the CPE sends a Periodic Inform message (default interval is 900 seconds / 15 minutes) to the VigorACS server, or when the CPE is restarted. If a CPE's Firmware Version already matches the Firmware Upgrade Job's selected firmware version, no update will be performed on that CPE.
Checking Firmware Upgrade Status
To view the progress of this task, go to the [Maintenance] > [Firmware Upgrade] section and click View Log for the relevant firmware job to view the current state. In this example, there are 2 devices and 1 successful firmware upgrade:
In the logs for the firmware upgrade, we can see that Device 20 has upgraded while Device 17 shows "Not Upgraded Yet". In this instance it's because the router is offline and unable to receive the firmware update instruction:
The status of a Firmware Upgrade through VigorACS can also be viewed directly in the CPE's logs, which can be viewed by first selecting a CPE, then go to [Monitoring] (screen with pulse icon) > [Logs] :
This is what each of the logged actions indicates:
| Download | The VigorACS system has instructed the CPE to download the required firmware and perform an upgrade. |
| Inform |
When the CPE has completed the upgrade and reconnected to the Internet. The Inform message from the CPE notifies the VigorACS system that the CPE is back on-line. In this example, there is a 3 minute delay, during which the CPE upgraded the firmware, restarted with the new firmware and reconnected to its VDSL Internet connection. |
| Transfer: Success |
This signifies that the firmware transfer completed successfully and the firmware upgrade was a success. |
Alternatively, or to see more details about the firmware upgrade, you can view the File Transfer tab to see details of the firmware upgrade, with the time of the upgrade and the file uploaded:
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- First Published: 16/06/2021
- Last Updated: 25/06/2021