ASA5585-X Context License.

[carlos.salgueiro]

Good Morning,
I would like some help to understand about the context licensing on an ASA 5585-X and the configuration in Active / Active failover.

I have today two boxes, each box has a license to 5 contexts, I put this appliances to run on failover active/active and would like to have 10 virtual firewalls (one active and other in standby), five active in each appliance.

What i need to understand is if i need an 10 context license in each box or this 5 context license in each one is fine, because them will only have 5 active firewalls in each box.

The standby context count as one license too ?

[nspasov]

Hello Carlos-

If you need a total of 10 virtual contexts total then 5 context licenses in each box would be fine. Version 8.3 and later of the ASA allowed for the licenses in H/A ASA pairs to be "combined" For more info check the link below:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/asa93/configuration/general/asa-general-cli/intro-license.html/index.html

– You have two ASA 5545-X ASAs, one with 20 contexts and the other with 10 contexts; the combined license allows 30 contexts. For Active/Active failover, the contexts are divided between the two units. One unit can use 18 contexts and the other unit can use 12 contexts, for example, for a total of 30.

You might also want to check the configuration guide for more info, unsupported features, etc:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/asa93/configuration/general/asa-general-cli/ha-contexts.html

I hope this helps!

Thank you for rating helpful posts!

[carlos.salgueiro]

Hello Neno, thanks for your time

I read the links and I believe that my thoughts are correct.

But just to confirm I will use the example that you gave me, in this case of 20 contexts in one box and 10 in the other box i will have a total of 30 contexts, correct?

And in this case i only have 15 virtual firewalls cause for each firewall i need one context in active state and other in standby, Am i correct ?

So, doing the math is this:

30 Contexts / 2 context per virtual firewall (Active state and Standby state) = 15 virtual firewalls.

Thanks,

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

The context in standby state don't decrement the available licenses.

In your case you could have a total of 30 active contexts, sometimes referred to as virtual firewalls.