Looking for Firewall selection advice using Firepower

[kossuth78]

All,

I'm fairly familar at this junction with Firepower and FMC.  Installed it and have been using it for approximately 8 months now on 5512x and 5525x ASAs but by my own admission my knowledge has a long ways to go. 

I have been asked to assemble a BOM to outfit a smallish remote office.  Approximately 75 users will be at this location.  I was considering using a 5516X firewall with Firepower.  Additionally, we will lack a robust virtualized infrastructure at this location so I was considering using ASDM to manage the SFR module vs the virtualized FMC which I am the most familiar with. 

Two questions. 

A.  Is my idea sound?

B.  How is the ASDM dashboard and usability compared to the virtualized FMC?

Ultimately I am going to consult with a Cisco partner to order everything and such but figured I would fire the first sanity check this way to make sure I was on the right track.  Thanks.  

[niko]

You can connect that branch FP module to your existing FMC. Depends on bandwidth and connection type, but I think generally it will give you better experience than managing FP via ASDM.

If you are willing to be pretty much a beta tester, you can go with Firepower Threat Defense image and have a local management via Firepower Device Manager. It is Java-free management for unified image - depending on features you need that may be an option. But be warned - IMHO there's still a lot to do to have a mature product.

Some information on FTD and FDM:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/firepower/620/fdm/fptd-fdm-config-guide-620/fptd-fdm-use-cases.html