where to find 'direction' on the FTD/FMC platform 7.x ?

[Eddie in.Mass]

good day all....so i'm here asking this question largely due to an Office365 hybrid roll-out that we are in midst of

and needing some outbound ruleset that points to *.office.com , etc....and then finding the only real way to do this is to spin up and create a VM to run CSDAC (dynamic attributes connector) , which is introduced in 7.0 / 7.1 / 7.2

to me, seems the 7.x branches of code (and new features) are coming along fast and furious...and while i'm excited to READ about the new(est) features, i also don't want to get in to some crash-and-burn situations like i've read about in The Community.

where is a place that aggregates real-world feedback on customers experience (good/bad) about , 7.1.x and forward ?

i have searched in these threads and not nearly as much content as i'd like ?

do i just send ALL my questions to Marvin Rhoades ? (a compliment to ya sir) ....or what....

ok....thnx

E

[Marvin Rhoads]

@Eddie in.Mass the Firepower release strategy described here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/security/firewalls/bulletin-c25-743178.html

7.0.x is under the "Extra Long Term Release" category and currently has the Gold Star. That's what I have most of my customers running (currently 7.0.2 or 7.0.3), where possible (considering hardware support, interoperability factors etc.).

7.1 would be a "Short Term Release". 7.2 is a "Long Term Release" but I've been holding off it it for production until a 7.2.1 release is issued. No bad experience in the lab, it's just good (in my opinion) to play it safe unless you really need features exclusive to 7.2.

[Massimo Baschieri]

@Marvin Rhoads

I take the chance to ask if you and possibly others have positive feedbacks on 7.0.3

Does it worth to go for it instead of 7.0.2 then 7.0.2.1?

[Marvin Rhoads]

If you are upgrading to 7.x then I would generally recommend going straight to 7.0.3 as of now. 7.1 or 7.2 are only indicated if you require a feature unique to one of those release trains.

If you are already on 7.0.1 or 7.0.2 then there little compelling reason to upgrade to 7.0.3 as it only fixes 4 additional published bugs vs. 7.0.2 (and two of them are cloud-specific).

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/firepower/70/relnotes/firepower-release-notes-700/bugs.html#Cisco_Reference.dita_bb2b4dac-c7d8-4a43-b188-041e3aa2f6df

[Massimo Baschieri]

Deployment is currently at 6.7.0.3 and planning to go to 7.0.x, but:

7.0.1 is the current suggested release, but it has several security bugs, as well as one relevant bug to us CSCvz00934

7.0.2 has CSCwb93932 and needs a double upgrade to 7.0.2.1

7.0.3 is quite new and less tested than the others

That's why I needed some feedbacks

[Marvin Rhoads]

While 7.0.3 is less-widely deployed as of today, it only adds bug fixes on top of 7.0.2 so it is pretty low risk.