upgrading used Cisco ASA 5510

Catalin Ciubotariu · ‎02-12-2016

Hello,

My intention is to buy two Cisco ASA 5510 with Security Plus license, 256 MB DRAM to use them in my personal lab. Of course I will try to upgrade them to 1 GB of DRAM to be able to upgrade afterwards the OS to 8.4/8.6. Let's suppose that I will find compatible memory, will I be successful in doing that? Do you see any issues? Does Cisco is allowing that from license perspective?

Thank you for your time.

Catalin

johnlloyd_13 · ‎02-12-2016

hi,

you don't necessarily need to upgrade the default RAM to 1GB if it's only for a lab environment.

it would still work and run. if you upgrade later on to 9.x image, the show version output will ask you to upgrade to the right RAM but you can disregard this as well.

i strongly suggest using GNS3 to run ASA 5520 with 8.4 image or ASAv to run 9.x image if you want to lab everything without having to worry about licensing issues. this will save you some money as well ;)

here's a sample output from a 5510 in my lab.

ciscoasa> sh ve

*************************************************************************
**                                                                     **
**   *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING ***   **
**                                                                     **
**          ----> Minimum Memory Requirements NOT Met! <----           **
**                                                                     **
** Installed RAM: 256 MB                                             **
** Required RAM: 1024 MB                                             **
** Upgrade part#: ASA5510-MEM-1GB=                                    **
**                                                                     **
** This ASA does not meet the minimum memory requirements needed to   **
** run this image. Please install additional memory (part number      **
** listed above) or downgrade to ASA version 8.2 or earlier.          **
** Continuing to run without a memory upgrade is unsupported, and     **
** critical system features will not function properly.               **
**                                                                     **
*************************************************************************

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software Version 9.0(4)
Device Manager Version 7.5(1)

Compiled on Wed 04-Dec-13 08:33 by builders
System image file is "disk0:/asa904-k8.bin"
Config file at boot was "startup-config"

ciscoasa up 115 days 1 hour

Hardware:   ASA5510, 256 MB RAM, CPU Pentium 4 Celeron 1600 MHz,
Internal ATA Compact Flash, 256MB
BIOS Flash M50FW080 @ 0xfff00000, 1024KB

Encryption hardware device : Cisco ASA-55xx on-board accelerator (revision 0x0)
                             Boot microcode        : CN1000-MC-BOOT-2.00
                             SSL/IKE microcode     : CNLite-MC-SSLm-PLUS-2.03
                             IPSec microcode       : CNlite-MC-IPSECm-MAIN-2.08
                             Number of accelerators: 1

0: Ext: Ethernet0/0         : address is 0021.a049.38dc, irq 9
1: Ext: Ethernet0/1         : address is 0021.a049.38dd, irq 9
2: Ext: Ethernet0/2         : address is 0021.a049.38de, irq 9
3: Ext: Ethernet0/3         : address is 0021.a049.38df, irq 9
4: Ext: Management0/0       : address is 0021.a049.38e0, irq 11
5: Int: Not used            : irq 11
6: Int: Not used            : irq 5

Licensed features for this platform:
Maximum Physical Interfaces       : Unlimited      perpetual
Maximum VLANs                     : 50             perpetual
Inside Hosts                      : Unlimited      perpetual
Failover                          : Disabled       perpetual
Encryption-DES                    : Enabled        perpetual
Encryption-3DES-AES               : Enabled        perpetual
Security Contexts                 : 0              perpetual
GTP/GPRS                          : Disabled       perpetual
AnyConnect Premium Peers          : 2              perpetual
AnyConnect Essentials             : Disabled       perpetual
Other VPN Peers                   : 250            perpetual
Total VPN Peers                   : 250            perpetual
Shared License                    : Disabled       perpetual
AnyConnect for Mobile             : Disabled       perpetual
AnyConnect for Cisco VPN Phone    : Disabled       perpetual
Advanced Endpoint Assessment      : Disabled       perpetual
UC Phone Proxy Sessions           : 2              perpetual
Total UC Proxy Sessions           : 2              perpetual
Botnet Traffic Filter             : Disabled       perpetual
Intercompany Media Engine         : Disabled       perpetual
Cluster                           : Disabled       perpetual

This platform has a Base license.

Catalin Ciubotariu · ‎02-13-2016

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.

I've used to run ASA 8.2/8.4 in GNS3 in the past, then after ASAv came, I've run it on VMware, then Cisco VIRL came. Of course you can emulate/simulate a lot but not everything. Things like HA and security contexts are not supported. So, to be able to run everything, I've came to the conclusion to build my own lab.

To go back to my question, I almost believe that I can do that upgrade with compatible RAM. Anyway, I found another pair of 5510 with 1 GB of DRAM. Hope I can resell them after a couple of years.