Our ASA beauties and their limitations

[Martin Smid]

Hello,

I have been trying to find some information regarding the maximum Flash and RAM on ASA firewalls. With all the recent changes in codes and also new version of AnyConnect (which by the way is a nice piece of work) there are some questions such as "Do we need to buy more memory? If so, how much can we buy?". I have looked on Cisco site and found the model comparison, white papers then some blogs but they all stated the installed or minimal memory. I am interested in the maximum we can put in the various models out there.

Does anyone have any useful links? Cisco site would be prefered, but I suppose anything will do

Many thanks folks,

Martin

[PAUL GILBERT ARIAS]

The memory depends on the OS version and the ASA platform. if you are running version 8.3 you will requiere certain amount of memory.

Do you have special needs?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

[Martin Smid]

Hi,

I realise 8.3+ needs more RAM. That is the reason why I am asking how much can we put into ASA. Not how much 8.3 needs. Basically if we upgrade the box I would like to know how much RAM and Flash we can stick in so we upgrade them just once.

[Pavel Pokorny]

Hi,

From my personal experience.

I have putt 4GB flash in ASA 5520, formatted, and system shows sometthing about 1GB - don't know where the problem is, but this size is enough for me :-).

And about RAM - it depends if you are talking about old ones or the new ones (5585).

At the old (till 5580) i gues there is limit of 4GB - due to HW whitch is used for building ASA (you can see chipset, and procesor - it's only PC).

The new one (5585) are something completely different - IE SSP - 72GB with IPS.....

BR

Pavel

[Martin Smid]

Hi Pavel,

yeah, 4 GBs is around my expectations and even though I would take your word for it, it is still better to have it from official source. If you can share any links that would be great. And yes we are talking 5505 - 5540 models.

Many thanks,

        Martin

[Pavel Pokorny]

Hi Martin,

I believe, the answer is in upgrade memory kits.

IE : ASA5520-MEM-2GB = 2GB Memory for Cisco ASA 5520

I haven't seen bigger kit, and because 5520 has 2 slots.....

HTH

Pavel

[Pavel Pokorny]

Hi Martin,

I have found answer to your question:"

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-12690

Note:  The maximum memory supported for the ASA-5520 and ASA-5540 is 2 Gb.  If you install 4 Gb of memory in these units, they will go into a boot loop.

So......

HTH

Pavel