ASA 5545-X number of cores

[Pavel Pokorny]

Dear all,

I was searching Internet for facts about ASA 5545-X.

Several sources claims (ie. https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/security/ngfw-firewalls/blog/2016/2?mobileredi_1), that 5545 is almost the about the CPU distrubution:

5545-X:
ASA: 6144 MB RAM, 1 CPU (2 core)
FP: 6144 MB RAM, 1 CPU (6 cores)

55545-X:
ASA: 8192 MB RAM, 1 CPU (2 core)
FP: 8192 MB RAM, 1 CPU (6 cores)

On my 5545-X :
sh cpu core
Core      5 sec  1 min  5 min
Core 0     9.8%  11.3%  10.7%

On my 5555-X:
sh cpu core
Core      5 sec  1 min  5 min
Core 0     3.8%   4.4%   4.7%
Core 1     3.8%   4.5%   4.8%

So, why am I missing another core on my 5545-X?

Thank you,

Pavel

[Dennis Perto · Accepted solution]

Hi Pavel

I see that you have read my post about ASA hardware. You are not missing a core. It is my post that is incorrect. I have had my doubts about the 5545-X and I have got different information about this. I am happy that you just confirmed that the ASA only takes 1 core.

Thank you. :)

[Marvin Rhoads]

Pavel and Dennis,

The 5500-X series allocates cores between the ASA software and the service module during boot time. Think of it as a fixed purposed ESXi host with one VM being the ASA and one being the FirePOWER (sfr) module.

Thus you never all of the cores from the ASA itself. I'm not positive of the allocation across all the models but an ASA 5525-X that I just checked has 4 cores - one allocated for the ASA and three allocated to the FirePOWER module.

You can confirm it as follows.

admin@sfr-2:~$ sudo dmidecode |grep -i cpu
 Socket Designation: CPU 1
 Socket Designation: CPU 2
 Socket Designation: CPU 3
admin@sfr-2:~$ 
Escape Sequence detected
Console session with module sfr terminated.
firewall/act# 
firewall/act# sh cpu core 
Core 5 sec 1 min 5 min
Core 0 6.0% 6.0% 6.0%
firewall/act#

[Dennis Perto]

Hi Marvin. :)
You are absolutely right. It is software defined, and Cisco can change this if they feel like it. This might be the reason why some have 2 cores for ASA and others only one on the 5545 platform. 

I will find out what happens if you insert a CPU from a 5545 in a 5512 - how the software will split the hardware.