Firepower on 5506, 5512 ceasing FTD development

[Ella Bella]

Reading the FTD 6.3 release notes it states that:

You cannot install Firepower Threat Defense 6.3 or subsequent releases on the ASA 5506-X, 5506W-X, 5506H-X, and 5512-X. The final supported FTD release for these platforms is 6.2.3

This is incredibly disappointing as I have a number of customers utilising 5506-X most of those purchased in the past 12 months, and heavily utilising the firepower features.

[balaji.bandi]

What cisco point of view 6.3.X  is more towards FTD and lot of new Features address in the area of FMC and NGFW / NGIPS.

I know bit fustrating on your issue, you got recently network the latest gear which can not be upgrade to good code.

But this is limitation, may be cisco good to look for the customer and give upgrade option to replace ASA 55XX kits.

[Ella Bella]

I think it would be quite rude and bad for business to ask my customers to pay more money to upgrade devices that are less than 12 months old.

[balaji.bandi]

Yes, i totally agreed, business need justification to upgrade and ROI point of view.

but iam sure cisco might have suggestion given by SE, they may come with more patched for 55XX  aslo soon.

Hope !!

[Ella Bella]

I guess my other question is if this also means no Firepower Services Software greater than 6.2.3.x as well?

[balaji.bandi]

6.3.0 is just 2 weeks old, you need to wait for further updates on other releases. or contact local SE further any updates avalable.

as such i did not see any news around for sure.

[ChrisHappel1984]

I also noticed Cisco’s announcement of no longer supporting FTD on the 5506-x models, but what really confuses me is the 5506-x shows no EoL date. If that’s the case, what’s the path forward for the device? Will they only support the traditional ASA/ASDM configuration with the separate, poorly integrated Firepower module? Will they only be manageable through an FMC (so no longer viable as stand-alone devices?) Will they only function as strictly a firewall with no further support for the ‘FirePower’ features? I *thought* the integrated FTD code was meant to be the intended future for ASAs - how can the 5506 still be ‘supported’ if it won’t be getting any further updates? I can only assume Cisco has added (or is planning to add) enough processor intensive features to the FTD that the little 5506s just can’t keep up, but now what?