PMC, How to manage firmware updates
What is PMC?
You can see here the full description of NComputing endpoint management system for LEAF OS devices (PCs/Laptops), RX420(RDP), RX-RDP+, RX-RDP and RX-300 thin clients.
PMC is provided as a virtual appliance and can be easily deployed on Azure Cloud, or installed on any VM that is compatible with VMWare ESXi, Citrix XenServer or Hyper-V. Here is how to download it.
Firmware image management
NComputing continuously develops the device firmware to bring new valuable device features. As these new features often require specific settings, the new firmware versions contain new product features, adding new settings and removing obsolete ones. However, PMC allows you to have strict control of these updates with tools built in which ensures completeness and consistency of firmware and configuration settings delivered by PMC to managed devices. You will be able to upgrade firmware of the devices manually, assign automatic upgrades, even to specific devices and more. A full disclosure of features is available in the documentation next to the download of PMC.
A word about configuration files.
You will notice the mention of .pcu files in this article. These type of configuration scheme files contain a matching array of features in order for the configuration settings of your devices and your features from your version of PMC to work in tandem. This will not be covered on this article.
We a separate article that talks about the management and update of configuration schemes.
Find eligible devices and monitoring reported versions of firmware.
Available devices are shown in PMC in the Devices tab as shown below.
When devices are connecting to PMC, both the firmware and configuration versions are detected and reported in PMC. You can also see such report of detected versions in the Administration Tab > Device Configurations.
Uploading new firmware images or configuration files to PMC will not change the information displayed in the above mentioned areas. But, it is when devices connect to PMC, it 'learns' the firmware and configuration versions used by the devices connected to it.
Uploading firmware to PMC
You can check on our website for the latest firmware update for your device. Go to ncomputing.com and sign in with your account, if you don't have one, you will have to create one. Hover your mouse pointer over the Support tab. Select DOWNLOAD NOW and select your device and desired operating system.
Scroll down until you see that DOWNLOAD button.
Once you download the firmware, you will need to extract it and know where the files are saved.
Depending on the version that you download, you may have both configuration files, matching different versions of PMC and firmware image to be uploaded to PMC.
At this point, you are ready to upload the firmware image. On PMC, click on the (1) Administration tab > Files. From there, (2) select the Firmware Image type and click (3) Browse. Once you locate the firmware file, click on (4) Upload.
Pushing changes to devices
Once the firmware image is uploaded, you can go to Devices and scroll down to the DEVICES area and click on Update Firmware.
You will have the opportunity to choose a desired firmware image and schedule an update for a later time if needed.
You will soon realize that under the Devices tab, Organization is the top-most device grouping level, where all connected devices will be shown. Any other sub level (Subnet Group, Subnet, Name Scope, Asset Tag-based group, Manual Group) can be selected as well. With this in context, especially for large organizations, this will help filter devices narrowing group selections, therefore, making it easier to perform update tasks on selected devices only (e.g. selected devices from one particular branch or department within your whole organization).
Firmware update may require licensing
PMC access and firmware update may require licensing. When not properly licensed, you may get a warning when updating. Be sure to purchase the proper licenses for your devices if needed.
Rev 10/2021
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