What is all the memory needed for when upgrading to 8.3 on ASA's?

[chris]

I am looking at upgrading an HA pair of ASA5520's from 8.2(2) to 8.3(1), and am just wondering why the huge upgrade in memory is needed. How are Cisco justifying where the additional memory is going to? Are there supposed to be some massive improvements in performance?

Thanks for your time,

Chris

[varrao · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

Why Does the ASA Need a Memory Upgrade?

This  seems to be a fairly common question with customers.  Why exactly are  we requiring a memory upgrade in order to run 8.3?  The reason is  simple.  The memory on the ASAs have not been increased since they were  originally introduced, yet as the years have gone by new features have  been added which require additional memory at boot.  The more memory the  base image requires, the less memory there is for things like ACLs,  connections, IPSec tunnels, SSL tunnels, etc.  Additionally, as we  introduce new features and customers adopt those, they consume  additional memory.

You can refer to this doc:

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

If you still have any queries, do let me know.

Thanks,

Varun

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[chris]

Thanks for the help!