Sophos Control Center version 4.1 release notes

About Sophos Control Center

Sophos Control Center (SCC) is the management tool for our range of Small Business Suites. It can be used to configure, monitor, manage, and report on Sophos small business endpoint products running on Windows and Mac OS X computers. For more information about Sophos Control Center, see Sophos Control Center Help.

For information on installing Sophos Control Center for the first time, see the Sophos Control Center startup guide.

For information on upgrading, see the Sophos Control Center upgrade guide.

Sophos documentation is published at http://www.sophos.com/support/docs/.

New in this version

Operating system compatibility

Sophos Control Center version 4.1 is compatible with the following operating systems only:
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard and Premium Add-on
  • Windows 7
Note: Sophos Control Center version 4.0 is compatible with older Windows operating systems. For full system requirements, see below.

System requirements

Supported operating systems

Supported operating systems are listed on the system requirements page of the Sophos website (http://www.sophos.com/products/all-sysreqs.html).

Hardware requirements

  • Processor: 2.0 GHz Pentium or equivalent.
  • Memory: 512 MB.
  • Disk space: 1.5 GB for installation without SQL Server 2005 Express; 1.8 GB for complete installation with SQL Server 2005 Express SP3.

    In addition to this, you will need around 200 MB - 350 MB per endpoint product you are downloading from Sophos.

Minimum database size

The computer where you place the database (which may be the same computer as the computer where Control Center is installed or a different one) needs a minimum of 1 GB disk space for data.

Maximum database size
  • If you use Microsoft SQL Server 2005, there is no limit apart from that set by the administrator.
  • If you use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, the maximum size that a database can reach is 4 GB.

Software requirements

  • At least Internet Explorer 5 or later.
  • If using an existing installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, it must have Service Pack 3 installed (SQL 2005 Express SP3 is supplied and installed alongside Sophos Control Center).
  • MS04-11 security update for Microsoft Windows. For more information and the list of operating systems affected, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 835732.

To enable Control Center to communicate with managed workstations, open ports 8192 and 8194 on the computer where the Control Center management server is installed.

To enable Control Center to download security software from Sophos, open port 80 on the computer where it is installed.

Known problems

  • Sophos Control Center 4.1 does not support SQL Server 2008 R2. SCC will install SQL Server 2005 Express even if SQL Server 2008 R2 is installed. However if SQL Server 2008 R2 is installed with a Sophos instance, SCC fails to install. This is typically due to having Sophos PureMessage installed.

    To workaround this issue, uninstall PureMessage, install Sophos Control Center and reinstall PureMessage.

    For more information on SCC 4.1 failing to install on SQL Server 2008 R2 with an existing Sophos instance, see http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/112542.html.
  • Computer names must use the standard ASCII 7 format to be valid in Sophos Control Center. Computers with names containing accented or non-Roman characters are not recognized.

  • DEF 56239 Error logged in Windows Event Viewer on Windows 2008 Server R2 platform after installation of Sophos Anti-Virus on same computer as Sophos Control Center.

    Workaround: Ignore

  • DEF 56480 Unable to deploy to Windows 2000

    This is caused by an incompatibility in default NTLM (network authentication) version between different Windows operating systems.

    Workaround: Upgrade Windows 2000 endpoints from NTLM v1 to NTLM v2 by changing the registry key LmCompatibilityLevel. For information on how to do this, see http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/110519.html.

  • WKI 55170 Standalone Firewall blocking the endpoint when tried to manage with SCC (with standalone SAV/SCF) See http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/110412.html.

  • Microsoft Windows 2008 Foundation Server only supports a limited number of users.

    If SCC 4.1 is installed on Microsoft Windows 2008 Foundation Server and more than 15 endpoints are managed, transitory updating problems will be visible on Sophos Control Center. This may also occur if other applications on endpoints also access Network Shares on the Server.

    We recommend that if you experience this problem, you install Microsoft Windows 2008 Standard Server.

  • If your Sophos Control Center server is running Windows firewall, this may block Control Center communications, resulting in:
    • Information such malware alerts not being displayed by Control Center.
    • The Updates section on the Control Center dashboard entering warning or critical states.
    • A remote console being unable to communicate with the Control Center server.

    The following Knowledgebase articles explain how to unblock network communications through Windows firewalls:

    http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/12990.html

    http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/12544.html

Technical Support

You can find technical support for Sophos products in any of these ways:

Legal notices

Copyright © 2011 Sophos Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise unless you are either a valid licensee where the documentation can be reproduced in accordance with the licence terms or you otherwise have the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.

Sophos and Sophos Anti-Virus are registered trademarks of Sophos Limited. All other product and company names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.