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Upgrading Wallarm NGINX modules

These instructions describe the steps to upgrade the Wallarm NGINX modules 4.x installed from the individual packages to version 5.0. These are the modules installed in accordance with one of the following instructions:

  • Individual packages for NGINX stable

  • Individual packages for NGINX Plus

  • Individual packages for distribution-provided NGINX

Upgrading with all-in-one installer

Since version 4.10, upgrading is performed using Wallarm's all-in-one installer as the individual Linux packages have been deprecated. This method simplifies the upgrade process and ongoing deployment maintenance compared to the previous approach.

The installer automatically performs the following actions:

  1. Checking your OS and NGINX version.
  2. Adding Wallarm repositories for the detected OS and NGINX version.
  3. Installing Wallarm packages from these repositories.
  4. Connecting the installed Wallarm module to your NGINX.
  5. Connecting the filtering node to Wallarm Cloud using the provided token.

All-in-one compared to manual

To upgrade the end‑of‑life node (3.6 or lower), please use the different instructions.

Requirements

  • Access to the account with the Administrator role in Wallarm Console for the US Cloud or EU Cloud.

  • Access to https://meganode.wallarm.com to download all-in-one Wallarm installer. Ensure the access is not blocked by a firewall.

  • Access to https://us1.api.wallarm.com for working with US Wallarm Cloud or to https://api.wallarm.com for working with EU Wallarm Cloud. If access can be configured only via the proxy server, then use the instructions.

  • Executing all commands as a superuser (e.g. root).

  • Access to the IP addresses below for downloading updates to attack detection rules and API specifications, as well as retrieving precise IPs for your allowlisted, denylisted, or graylisted countries, regions, or data centers.

    34.96.64.17
34.110.183.149
35.235.66.155
34.102.90.100
34.94.156.115
35.235.115.105

    34.160.38.183
34.144.227.90
34.90.110.226

Upgrade procedure

  • If filtering node and postanalytics modules are installed on the same server, then follow the instructions below to upgrade all.

    You will need to run a node of the newer version using all-in-one installer on a clean machine, test that it works well and stop the previous one and configure traffic to flow through the new machine instead of the previous one.

  • If filtering node and postanalytics modules are installed on different servers, first upgrade the postanalytics module and then the filtering module following these instructions.

Step 1: Prepare clean machine

When upgrading modules with all-in-one installer, you cannot upgrade an old package installation - instead you need to use a clean machine. Thus, as step 1, prepare a machine with one of the supported OS:

  • Debian 10, 11 and 12.x

  • Ubuntu LTS 18.04, 20.04, 22.04

  • CentOS 7, 8 Stream, 9 Stream

  • Alma/Rocky Linux 9

  • RHEL 8.x

  • RHEL 9.x

  • Oracle Linux 8.x

  • Redox

  • SuSe Linux

  • Others (the list is constantly widening, contact Wallarm support team to check if your OS is in the list)

Using new clean machine will lead to that at some moment you will have both old and new node, which is good: you can test the new one working properly without stopping the old one.

Step 2: Install latest NGINX and dependencies

Install the latest NGINX version of:

  • NGINX stable - see how to install it in the NGINX documentation.

  • NGINX Mainline (the latest supported version is v1.25.5) - see how to install it in the NGINX documentation.

  • NGINX Plus - see how to install it in the NGINX documentation.

  • Distribution-Provided NGINX - to install, use the following commands:

    sudo apt update 
sudo apt -y install --no-install-recommends nginx

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

    sudo yum -y update 
sudo yum install -y nginx

    sudo yum -y update 
sudo yum install -y nginx

    sudo yum -y update 
sudo yum install -y nginx

Step 3: Prepare Wallarm token

To install node, you will need a Wallarm token of the appropriate type. To prepare a token:

  1. Open Wallarm Console → Settings → API tokens in the US Cloud or EU Cloud.
  2. Find or create API token with the Deploy source role.
  3. Copy this token.
  1. Open Wallarm Console → Nodes in the US Cloud or EU Cloud.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Create the node of the Wallarm node type and copy the generated token.
    • Use existing node group - copy token using node's menu → Copy token.

Step 4: Download all-in-one Wallarm installer

Wallarm suggests all-in-one installations for the following processors:

  • x86_64

  • ARM64 (beta)

To download all-in-one Wallarm installation script, execute the command:

curl -O https://meganode.wallarm.com/5.2/wallarm-5.2.1.x86_64-glibc.sh

curl -O https://meganode.wallarm.com/5.2/wallarm-5.2.1.aarch64-glibc.sh

Step 5: Run all-in-one Wallarm installer

Filtering node and postanalytics on the same server

  1. Run downloaded script:

    # If using the x86_64 version:
sudo env WALLARM_LABELS='group=<GROUP>' sh wallarm-5.2.1.x86_64-glibc.sh

# If using the ARM64 version:
sudo env WALLARM_LABELS='group=<GROUP>' sh wallarm-5.2.1.aarch64-glibc.sh

    The WALLARM_LABELS variable sets group into which the node will be added (used for logical grouping of nodes in the Wallarm Console UI).

    # If using the x86_64 version:
sudo sh wallarm-5.2.1.x86_64-glibc.sh

# If using the ARM64 version:
sudo sh wallarm-5.2.1.aarch64-glibc.sh

  2. Select US Cloud or EU Cloud.

  3. Enter Wallarm token.

Filtering node and postanalytics on different servers

Sequence of steps to upgrade the filtering node and postanalytics modules

If the filtering node and postanalytics modules are installed on different servers, then it is required to upgrade the postanalytics packages before updating the filtering node packages.

  1. Upgrade postanalytics module following these instructions.

  2. Upgrade filtering node:

    # If using the x86_64 version:
sudo env WALLARM_LABELS='group=<GROUP>' sh wallarm-5.2.1.x86_64-glibc.sh filtering

# If using the ARM64 version:
sudo env WALLARM_LABELS='group=<GROUP>' sh wallarm-5.2.1.aarch64-glibc.sh filtering

    The WALLARM_LABELS variable sets group into which the node will be added (used for logical grouping of nodes in the Wallarm Console UI).

    # If using the x86_64 version:
sudo sh wallarm-5.2.1.x86_64-glibc.sh filtering

# If using the ARM64 version:
sudo sh wallarm-5.2.1.aarch64-glibc.sh filtering

Step 6: Transfer NGINX and postanalytics configuration from old node machine to new

Transfer node-related NGINX configuration and postanalytics configuration from the configuration files on the old machine to the files on a new machine. You can do that by copying the required directives.

Source files

On an old machine, depending on OS and NGINX version, the NGINX configuration files may be located in different directories and have different names. Most common are the following:

  • /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf with NGINX settings

  • /etc/nginx/conf.d/wallarm-status.conf with Wallarm node monitoring settings. Detailed description is available within the link

Also, the configuration of the postanalytics module (Tarantool database settings) is usually located here:

  • /etc/default/wallarm-tarantool or

  • /etc/sysconfig/wallarm-tarantool

Target files

As all-in-one installer works with different combinations of OS and NGINX versions, on your new machine, the target files may have different names and be located in different directories.

Step 7: Restart NGINX

Restart NGINX using the following command:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 8: Test Wallarm node operation

To test the new node operation:

  1. Send the request with test SQLI and XSS attacks to the protected resource address:

    curl http://localhost/?id='or+1=1--a-<script>prompt(1)</script>'

  2. Open the Wallarm Console → Attacks section in the US Cloud or EU Cloud and ensure attacks are displayed in the list.

  3. As soon as your Cloud stored data (rules, IP lists) is synchronized to the new node, perform some test attacks to make sure your rules work as expected.

Step 9: Configure sending traffic to Wallarm node

Depending on the deployment approach being used, perform the following settings:

Update targets of your load balancer to send traffic to the Wallarm instance. For details, please refer to the documentation on your load balancer.

Before full redirecting of the traffic to the new node, it is recommended to first redirect it partially and check that the new node behaves as expected.

Configure your web or proxy server (e.g. NGINX, Envoy) to mirror incoming traffic to the Wallarm node. For configuration details, we recommend to refer to your web or proxy server documentation.

Inside the link, you will find the example configuration for the most popular of web and proxy servers (NGINX, Traefik, Envoy).

Step 10: Remove old node

  1. Delete old node in Wallarm Console → Nodes by selecting your node and clicking Delete.

  2. Confirm the action.

    When the node is deleted from Cloud, it will stop filtration of requests to your applications. Deleting the filtering node cannot be undone. The node will be deleted from the list of nodes permanently.

  3. Delete machine with the old node or just clean it from Wallarm node components:

    sudo apt remove wallarm-node nginx-module-wallarm

    sudo apt remove wallarm-node nginx-module-wallarm

    sudo yum remove wallarm-node nginx-module-wallarm

    sudo yum remove wallarm-node nginx-module-wallarm

    sudo yum remove wallarm-node nginx-module-wallarm