ASA5520 7.2(4)33 to 8.2(5) - Failover

[Dale Sanderson]

Hi there,

I have an upgrade planned on our ASA5520's running an active/standby failover scenario, moving from 7.2(4) 8.2(5)

Reading the release notes and a few other documents online I can see that there are no major syntax changes so should be good to go in that respect. I do however have some concerns over failover with the upgrade.

My plan of attack would be to upgrade the standby to the new code, failover to the upgraded unit and monitor for stability, then do the primary. During this process and when the standby device returns will it automatically join the failover group OK?

From the release notes I can see:

"

In a failover configuration, the two units must have the same hardware configuration, must be the same model, must have the same number and types of interfaces, must have the same feature licenses, and must have the same amount of DRAM. You do not have to have the same amount of flash memory"

I can confirm all of the above requirements are met but cannot see any reference to different code versions - I presume that failover pair should be OK in this scenario?

Any information provided would be appreciated or any other gotcha's you may envisage me facing

Cheers!

[mvsheik123]

Hi Dale,

My plan of attack would be to upgrade the standby to the new code, failover to the upgraded unit and monitor for stability, then do the primary'

-The units will not be in Active/Stadby mode anymore when you have different code (major release). The failover will not work. Also, there may be routing issues for the outgoing traffic thru firewalls. The best way is to check the release notes for 8.2(5) code for any open caveats.

hth

MS