ASA5540 Memory Upgrade - 3Gig? 4Gig

[rsmith]

I upgraded our ASA5540 to 8.4, THEN noted the increased requirements for Memory.

I purchased the 2Gig upgrade, but when installing in the Primary unit today, noted that there were 4 slots.

Slots 1/3 had 512Mb modules, so I installed the 2 x 1Gig modules in slots 2/4.

The ASA5540 came up clean, and it "sees" the entire 3Gig of memory.

My question: Is this a SUPPORTED configuration? All documentation I have read only mentions 2Gig of memory. Also, If I had FOUR x 1Gig memory modules, would the ASA5540 support the 4Gigs of memory?

(I have not upgraded the Failover unit yet, it is running in the Primary role at this time...)

Russ

[Allen P Chen · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Per the Release Notes for 8.4, there should only be 2GB of RAM for the 5540:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa84/release/notes/asarn84.html#wp321918

It is NOT recommended to have additional memory in the ASA.  There was a previous bug which detailed the ASA crashing when the original memory was left in the chassis:

http://tools.cisco.com/Support/BugToolKit/search/getBugDetails.do?method=fetchBugDetails&bugId=CSCtg94369

Although this bug does not affect software version 8.4, having additional memory is still not a supported hardware configuration.

Hope this helps.