ASA on Firepower 2140 - memory allocation?

[JB-WH]

Hi, all.  I'm working with a Firepower 2140 in platform mode, running an ASA image (9.14(1)10).

The hardware has 64GB of RAM.  The ASA image is only allocated 14,368,182,272 bytes.

The ASA is currently running at 97% RAM utilization, and trying to connect with ASDM usually fails, resulting in the message "process_create: out of stack memory / Unable to create Unicorn Admin Handler" getting spit out to the console.

For the life of me, I can't find a way to allocate more RAM to the ASA image.  Is it even possible to utilize more RAM for the ASA image on these things?

[nspasov · Accepted solution]

The Firepower 2140 actually has a total of 80GB of RAM. However, that is split between the x86 CPU architecture (64GB) and the NPU architecture (16GB). When running ASA code, the application runs on the NPU architecture. As a result, the x86 and its allocated memory are dormant.

If your current memory utilization is so high, you might be oversubscribing the appliance (e.g. large routing table, ACEs, xlates, etc.). However, you may also be hitting a defect so it would be best to reach out to TAC for further investigation and assistance. 

Thank you for rating helpful posts!

[JB-WH]

Thanks, I didn't realize there was a hard division between the two.

Will look into getting up updated, since the image is a year+ old anyway.