About upgrading to a more a feature-rich XProtect Professional VMS product

If you use one of the XProtect Professional VMS products, for example XProtect Express, and decide that you want to use the additional features and functionality found in a different XProtect VMS product, for example, XProtect Professional, you can upgrade your system.

First, you must place a trade-in order for your current XProtect Professional VMS product and purchase a base license for a more advanced XProtect VMS product. When you do this, you receive a new software license file. The software license file defines which XProtect Professional VMS product you can use. Therefore, you do not need to install anything, only import your new software license file.

Your settings from the previous product are the same in the new product. You must redefine some of the old settings and define the settings to the new functionality included in your more advanced and feature-rich XProtect product to make use of the expanded functionality.

Example: If you upgrade from XProtect Express to XProtect Professional, you should, among other things, be aware of:

XProtect Smart Client: In XProtect Express, only five instances of XProtect Smart Client can be connected at a time. When you upgrade, you can connect more instances of the XProtect Smart Client. Since you come from XProtect Express, the Management Application is set to only allow five connected XProtect Smart Clients at a time. You can change this setting manually in the Management Application. In general, you gain the full use of XProtect Smart Client functionality when you upgrade.
Number of cameras: XProtect Express allows you to use up to 48 cameras at the same time, while the number is unrestricted in XProtect Professional. The number of cameras you have added are inherited by the upgraded product, but you must manually add any additional cameras to the Management Application yourself.

For more information about the various differences between products, check the Milestone website.

If you have installed a trial version of any XProtect Professional VMS product, you can also upgrade to a licensed version of the XProtect Professional VMS product. To do this, you purchase a base license as well as the needed hardware device licenses and import the software license file. Keep in mind that the retention time for a trial installation is maximum five days. As a result, you never have more than five days of recordings once you have imported the software license file. Remember to manually change the retention time in the Management Application for your product.