ASA 55xx memory upgrade and failover

[scchesney]

I need to add memory to my ASA 55xx's (running 8.2(2)), some of which are config'd active/active or active/standby. The docs say that ram must be identical, which makes sense for production. My question is this: can I upgrade the standby units first, make them active, and then upgrade their mate? Or must I schedule downtime to take the pair down for the upgrade?

TIA.

--Scott

[Marcin Latosiewicz]

Scott,

Unfortunately no way to perform a hardware upgrade without having a brief moment of downtime.

I would advise to take off the primary from failover (no failover, write [all], shut it down).
Do the upgrade on it.

While you're booting primary up, shut down the secondary.

Install mem upgrade on secondary if you see that primary has some properly up.

There should be a brief moment where primary and secondary are both down (or not fully booted).

Does that sound reasonable?

Marcin

[scchesney]

Hi, Marcin --

It makes sense, but isn't what I was hoping to hear. Oh, well, I guess I'll just schedule some down time and do all the firewalls in one fell swoop.

Thanks again.

--Scott

[Magnus Mortensen]

Scott,

     Actually, I have some good news... With 8.2 we support mistmatch memoryfor failover. Mind you, you do not want to leave it in this state for an extended period of time, but if you upgrade the standby, bring it up, and failover you should be fine.

Look under Hardware Requirements...

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa82/configuration/guide/ha_overview.html#wp1077536

- Magnus

[siddhartham]

Thanks for the information Magnus, its really helpful.