Upgrading a 4215 to IPS

[daviduga79]

I would like an explanation of the upgrade process from a Cisco 4215 IDS sensor to the IPS 5.0 capabilities. Does it require extra hardware?

[rwassom]

If you do not have the 4FE card installed, you will need to purchase/install one in order to create inline pairs on a 4215 with IPS 5.0 software. In a future release, you will be able to take advantage of the inline capabilities with a single sensing interface.

Regarding the upgrade process, this can be found in the readme file for the 5.0 Major Upgrade (to maintain current settings) or the 5.0(2) system image (for clean system image). Both of these install files, as well as the associated readmes, can be found on the software download page on CCO:

http://www.cisco.com/kobayashi/sw-center/ciscosecure/ids/crypto/

-Rusty

[daviduga79]

Are there any memory upgrade requirements as well?(using this same scenario of ugrading a Cisco 4215 to IPS). Also, I understand that the Cisco 4210 is not upgradeable to IPS mode but can handle version 5.0 software. Is that accurate? Thanks for your quick reply!

[rwassom]

No. The IDS-4215 memory does not need to be upgraded to run 5.0 software. However, you should verify your BIOS and ROMMON have been updated to versions 5.1.7 and 1.4 respectively per the 5.0 installation instructions. The upgrades are done concurrently, so as long as the BIOS shows up as 5.1.7 during boot you should be okay.

You are correct. The IDS-4210 is capable of running 5.0 software in promiscuous mode only (not inline). Memory on this platform must be upgraded to 512MB before installing 5.0 software. The memory upgrade part number is IDS-4210-MEM-U=.