Advise on new firewall

[lawsuites]

Hello everyone, my friend has cisco pix 501 and it's keep rebooting it self.  I have read this is hardware issue with 501 and best thing is replace with new firewall.  He as an exchange 2003 with 10 mailboxes and around 10 workstations, what firewall should he buy that is not too much expensive and does the job for him(5505?). How can we copy the configs from 501 and transfer to new firewall.  Thanks advance for your advise.

[Jennifer Halim · Accepted solution]

Spot on, ASA 5505 is a direct replacement for PIX 501.

Here is the model comparison for ASA 5505 and other different models of ASA:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/prod_models_comparison.html#~mid-range

What version of software is he running on his PIX 501? If he is running PIX version 6.x and below, there will be slight configuration changes to ASA version 7.0 and above. However, if he is already running version 7.0 and above on the PIX, then there will be no config difference.

However, if the ASA is running version 8.3, there will be a lot of changes in the NAT and ACL configurations.

Hope that answers your question.

[lawsuites]

Thanks Jennifer.

I know little bit about cisco.  Can you give me some advise where i can read more and learn more about how to configure them.  I have worked with 5510 little bit.  Thanks

[Jennifer Halim]

Sure, here are all the configuration guide for all different versions:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/products_installation_and_configuration_guides_list.html

And here are the sample configuration on specific scenarios:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/prod_configuration_examples_list.html

Happy reading ...

[lawsuites]

Thanks