ASA5510 IOS upgrade from 7.04 to 8.2

[MikeCarter1]

Good Day all - first time poster. Thank you for viewing my post.

We are about to upgrade our ASA's from 7.04 to 8.2. Obviously I will be opening a TAC case to assist with the upgrade and I will also be upgrading ASDM software at the same time. These production firewalls are paired with an active --> failover scenario and not active --> active.  I had previously engaged cisco regarding the upgrade and they have recommended an upgrade path to ensure success. Also, I have a pair of test ASA's that I've gone through the upgrade process with - documenting the changes in commands and any changes in my config (I didn't notice any).

So, the reason for my post is this: What are the gotcha's that you may have run into when upgrading your ASA's? I would like to be prepared as possible and any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

These are fairly high visibility ASA's and any downtime due to the upgrade needs to be mitaged as much as possible.

Again, thank you for your time.

[varrao · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

There is no hurdles as such if nyou are just upgrading from 7.0.4 to 8.2, but yes you should follow an upgrade chain for it:

7.0.4-----> 7.2.4-----> 8.0.5------>8.2

moreover since the firewall is in failover, strictly follow the document for zer-downtime upgrade:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/products/ps6120/products_configuration_example09186a0080b20f35.shtml

this should not be a problem, and always have a back up of your config with you.

Hope this helsp.

Thanks,

Varun