I just found out, that all upgrades for AS < V4.6 are not possible anymore via the Automation Studio upgrade menu.
We have many of old plants which are based on older AS versions (down to AS 2.7) and we have to maintain them.
Often is there an AS upgrade installation required when you open the AS project.
Before it was easily possible to install all required upgrades just via the AS upgrade functionality, but that is not working anymore in AS < V4.6.
I understand that there is an EOL for the older AS versions at some point and that these versions get not further developed / fixed anymore, but why got the downloads for the older AS versions removed?
Hi @Michael.Uray, you are right this is not possible anymore. But it is not because EOL, it is because possibility security issue. For newer AS this was fixed in AS itself, for older one you can still use manual upgrade download and installation. Sorry for that.
Unfortunately, older Automation Studio ( AS < V4.6) upgrades through the Tools > Upgrades process was discontinued because the older versions of AS don’t have sufficient encryption for today’s internet environment. This is outlined in the cybersecurity notice linked below.
Thank you guys, this explains it from the technical point of view. The B&R webserver only supports TLS 1.2 or greater, but the older AS versions work only with older (deprecated) TLS versions.
In this case I recommend all users to backup their upgrades from local the Automation Studio directory, since all setups get stored there.
You can do this by creating a batch / cmd file in the folder of your desired backup destination (e.g. on your server) with the following content: