ASA 5505 Activation License

[tsaimaster]

I've purchased a used ASA 5505 device.  Upon reseting and looking at the startup, I see that it is unable to retrieve Activation License and used default.  Activation License shows as all zeros.

Is there a way to find whatever Activation License is tied to my device from Cisco without a service contract ?  or I have to live with the default ?

Thanks.

[varrao]

Hi John,

thats the default license on the ASA, if you want toc heck your license, then dpo "show activation-key". Licenses are generated based on Serial Number, do "show version" and that woudl show you what features are enabled on the ASA. To upgarde the license you woudl need to buy license from Cisco.

Varun

[tsaimaster]

So I would assume it's not possible to 'loose' the activation key.   After messing with the firmwares, I thought maybe I did loose the key because it was suppose to have 100 inside users license but there is no license which gives 10 users. 

[varrao]

Yes John, you can never delete a license key you can only overwrite it by entering a new license key. So you can relax

Hope that helps

Varun

[hobbe]

Hi

The license is absolutely possible to screw up in several ways.

and sometimes it does not even work to reset with the license that you could see with a show lic before something went bad. fx with botnet license.

I normally try to make it part of the backup to know the license key on units under my control and if possible I make a copy and fasten it to the unit so that in case I need to I can fix a broken flash or a crashed update by hand without looking for papers.

If you have problems with your unit after turning your unit into a vegetable by erasing the flash or something similar you can contact cisco license team,  licensing@cisco.com I think it is.

Good luck

HTH

[m.graham]

Actually Varun that's incorrect.  I've just rolled back my ASA5505 from 8.4 to 8.2 after an issue with NAT during the upgrade.  When the ASA rebooted, my activation key was all zero's and now I'm limited to 10 internal hosts and I'm unable to use VPN-3DES-AES until I can get this issue resolved.