Tech Tip: Upcoming JACE 8000 Changes

Last Time to Buy N4.1 – N4.7 Licenses is November 28, 2022

Dear Niagara Community Member,

In response to supply chain adjustments and component end-of-life situations, Tridium’s JACE® 8000 product package is being updated. On November 29, 2022, Tridium support for Oracle’s version of JAVA on the JACE 8000 will end. Also, Tridium has contracted with a new micro-SD card vendor. Thus, by approximately February 1, 2023, a JACE delivered new from the factory will have a different brand of micro-SD card inserted when compared to the previous configuration. The combination of these changes necessitates an update to the JACE 8000 factory image and sets new limitations on Tridium’s ability to continue to sell licenses for older releases of Niagara Framework®. Here is a timeline to illustrate the upcoming changes:

Summary information about each of these changes is provided below. We have also put together an FAQ document to address typical follow-on questions. We are alerting the Niagara Community to these upcoming changes and the resulting N4 licensing timeline so that you can take any necessary actions to minimize the impact on customers.

End of Oracle Java Support on JACE 8000

Summary: As Tridium continues to maintain and update the JACE 8000 platform, certain changes in firmware and hardware have been necessary. With the Niagara 4.8 release, Tridium moved away from Oracle as its JACE 8000 Java provider to Azul. To complete this transition, Tridium will end support of Oracle Java on JACE 8000 on November 29, 2022.

Impact: Tridium will no longer be able to sell N4 licenses that will permit running a version below 4.8 for JACE 8000. There will be no impact to existing licenses or hardware running lower versions. Warranty and RMA replacement for already licensed JACE 8000s will not be impacted. Niagara 4 Supervisor licensing and permitted versions will not be impacted by this change.

Change in Micro-SD Card Provider

Summary: JACE 8000 currently uses a micro-SD card that is near its end of life, so Tridium will be phasing in a replacement. The new micro-SD card will only support Niagara version 4.9u1 and higher. This change in providers is anticipated to take place in Q1 of 2023 by approximately February 1.

Impact: After this change is implemented, JACE 8000s shipped from Tridium will not run any Niagara versions lower than 4.9u1. These changes do not affect the ability of existing JACE 8000s to run older Niagara versions or to upgrade to the latest version. This change has no impact on licensing or host-id schemes. Note: There will be a stock of the previous version of micro-SD cards reserved for RMAs and replacement.

Factory-Restore Version Update

Summary: As a result to these Java and Micro-SD Provider changes, Tridium updated the factory-restore version to Niagara 4.9u1 in Q2 2022. This change was rolled out across all factory-installed images, including OEM-specific and appliance images.

Impact: This update to the factory-restore version of Niagara should have no impact on the normal process of commissioning a JACE sent from the factory to Niagara 4.9u1 or higher. If there are special circumstances that require JACE commissioning to a version lower than 4.9u1, there is a clean dist routine available until November 29, 2022. Look for more instructions for using this method in the FAQ document above.

We appreciate your continued support of the Niagara Framework® product line, including your actions to keep Niagara deployments under your supervision up-to-date and secure.