How to upgrade Cisco 2100 series FTD without FMC?

[JordanRoger40159]

Hello, I purchased a Cisco 2130 series firewall past 6.2.3 to at least 6.3 or 6.5. However, I am unable to find any documentation on upgrading the 2100 series firewalls without using FMC. I will only be managing it with the FDM. Is it possible to upgrade the FTD version without an FMC? If so, how would you do so? Would it just simply be loading up the update onto a USB stick and running it via CLI or FDM? Thank you in advance.

[Marvin Rhoads]

Check the FTD Configuration Guide for Firepower Device Manager (FDM). It has detailed instructions on how to upgrade:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/firepower/650/fdm/fptd-fdm-config-guide-650/fptd-fdm-mgmt.html#id_32969

It's also possible to upgrade from cli but generally not recommended.

https://ciscoskills.net/2017/07/12/update-firepower-devices-manually/

[nspasov]

Also, to add to Marvin's excellent answer, you should also look at CDO as it now supports FTD as well. This will give you centralized management and unlike the FMC, CDO can co-exist with FDM. 

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