topic Re: ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up in Network Security

ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up

Devinder Sharma — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:23:20 GMT

Hi All,

I wish to upgarde a redundant pair of firewalls in a maintenance window. Downgtime is not an issue during two hour window.

We wish to upgrade from 7.2 to 8.3. Is it safe to download 8.x image to 5510s, set up boot system flash:/newimage, boot system flash:/oldimage and then reload the firewalls? I can certainly also failover to secondary and then uograde primary and then revert back control to primary and then upgrade secondary, but not sure if I need to migrate from 7.2 to something like 7.9 and then 8.0 and 8.3 for each firewall. I tried to do some research on Cisco docs, but I could not find answer, though I am sure it is buried somewhere.

Please advise.

Thanks a lot.

Re: ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up

Kureli Sankar — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:52:34 GMT

What is the reason to go to 8.3? Are you looking for new features?

If you want to upgrade just because the new code is available, then I'd like to suggest to go to 8.2.

8.3 has memory requirements for all platform. There have been many changes in the NAT is configured.

You can read in the release notes here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa83/release/notes/asarn83.html

-KS

Re: ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up

Devinder Sharma — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:11:17 GMT

Thanks KS for your advice. The reason to upgrade is PCI compliance for two factor authentication, which is supported on 8.x.

I agree if 8.3 requires a ton of additonal DRAM, then 8.2.x will do for our application. And as I indicated, down time is not an issue, in that case, do you forsee any issues in downloading 8.2.x code and then reload the firewall. Hopefully there is nothing like boot rom upgrade that requires intermediate code?

Thanks again.

Re: ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up

ankurs2008 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:36:15 GMT

For zero downtime , ensure to upgrade from version 7.2 -> 8.0 -> 8.2 , if the same is done within a downtime then 7.2 -> 8.2 cane be done directly

Re: ASA5510 firmware upgrade for Active/Standby set up

Devinder Sharma — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:57:06 GMT

Thanks Ankurs for your advice. I am planning to do it over this weekend for direct upgrade to 8.2.2.