FCM and FDM

[Ratheesh mv]

What is the difference between Firepower chassis manager and firepower device manager?

Like a Firepower Management Center (FMC), a Firepower 9300 Series and 4100 Series security appliance has its own web interface, called Firepower Chassis Manager. To install, upgrade, or downgrade any security application on a Firepower appliance, login to the Firepower Chassis Manager is necessary. Alternatively, you can access the CLI of a Firepower appliance through Secure shell (SSH) or console connection. 

If you are running a Firepower 2100 Series hardware with the software Version 6.2.1 or higher, you can choose one of the two web user interfaces to configure and manage your FTD. You can register it with a standalone Firepower Management Center (FMC) and manage it through the FMC. Alternatively, you can enable local management capability and manage the FTD directly via an on-box manager, called Firepower Device Manager (FDM). 

Is a Firepower chassis manager web interface of 9300 and 4100 series?

Is firepower device manager web interface of 2100 series?

How can we differentiate between firepower chassis manager and firepower device manager?

Thanks in advance.

[Rob Ingram]

@Ratheesh mv Firepower Chassis Manager (FCM) manages the underlying physical hardware https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/fxos/config/asa-2100-fxos-config/fcm.html. The FCM manage 2100, 3100, 4100 and 9300 hardware.

On top of the hardware runs the FTD (or ASA) software image. The FTD image is the actual firewall application, this can either be managed locally using FDM (Firepower Device Manager) or FMC (Firepower Management Centre).

FCM would have a management IP address and WebGUI to manage the hardware, you'd then have a different management IP address for the FTD - whether this is managed using FDM or FMC.

You are mostly going to be using the FDM or FMC WebGUI to manage the firewall on a day to day basis, only using FCM if you create additional etherchannels or something related to the hardware.