Cisco Firewall :: Upgrade ASA 5550 Failover Pair From 8.2 To 8.4 Without Zero-downtime
Jun 28, 2011
Since the "zero-downtime upgrade" is not supported, I would like to validate the process I put together for upgrading a failover pair of asa5550 with the characteristics below. Specifically I am concerned with the role of the standby during the upgrade. This is my setup:
.- single context mode
.- active/standby
.- current firmware asa821-k8.bin / asdm-621.bin
.- role: firewall and VPN concentrator for segmented server farm network. Dynamic/static/exemption NAT heavily used.
My target is asa842-k8.bin / asdm-645.bin and I am doing a two step upgrade (8.2(1) -> 8.3(1) -> 8.4(2)) to avoid the "unidirectional" attribute and CSCtf89372 bug issues. This is a short version of what I have in mind:
.- Verify stability of failover pair and make adequate backups before beginning.
.- plug into the console of active, ssh into active and standby.
.- vpn/act(config)# no failover ( disable failover from active )
[Code]....
After reboot, point to 8.4(2) and reload again. Same concern regarding the standby unit.
I understand there might be configuration tweaks needed to the NAT configuration. After second reboot test connectivity and if successful, on active "failover", "write standby" and "failover reload-standby". Otherwise "downgrade" and back to the drawing board.
I need to upgrade the active/standby failover pair of 5510 ASA's to have1 Gig DRAM each, and I am trying to plan out the upgrade process. I'm looking for a zero downtime upgrade process.
I know that the failover pair has to have the same amount of memory, so how do I perform a zero-downtime upgrade process?Can I power off the standby unit and upgrade it's memory first? Or will it cause a memory mismatch between the active and standby units when it is powered on?
Preparing to upgrade the IOS on a failover pair of ASA 5580's and was wandering what is gonna happen after I've upgraded the IOS on the standby unit and rebooted. How is the active unit going to react when it sees an IOS mismatch prior to me making the standby the primary and upgrading it's IOS ?
We are planning to upgrade IOS on a 5520 pair, from 7.2.4 to 8.2.4, and cause minimum outage. And according to the documentation, we can do the zero downtime IOS upgrade by failing over to the standby ASA and back.
[URL]
So, can during this process, can we go from 7.2.5 to 8.0.5 (last maintenance release), or do we have to move to 8.0.2 first ?
We are currently on 8.0(4) and planning on upgrading our failover pair to 8.4.2, I read some documents saying that we can perform a zero downtime upgrade.
According the below documents Version 8.2 supports mismatch memory failover, [URL]
Upgrade Path:
Active Firewall: Standby Firewall: 8.0(4) 8.0(4)-->8.2.2 8.0(4) Upgrade RAM-2G---Reload faiover to standby 8.2.2 8.0(4)--->8.2.2 8.2.2
[code]...
Can I perform zero downtime upgrade with the above upgrade path? Will both the firewalls act as a failover pair if one is on 8.2.2 and other is on 8.4.2.
"Performing Zero Downtime Upgrades for Failover Pairs
The two units in a failover configuration should have the same major (first number) and minor (second number) software version. However, you do not need to maintain version parity on the units during the upgrade process; you can have different versions on the software running on each unit and still maintain failover support." [URL]
i am trying to setup a failover pair on Cisco asa 5520 - need a state full failover. Do i need two ports dedicated to obtain the above - one for LAN based failover and one for state full fail over ? also do i need a switch in between to connect them ?
I have a running ASA5520 in my network and recently we plan to add a failover pair as a standby unit for the running asa. Both of the ASA have the same specs and software. the only thing that the soon to be secondary ASA does not have is the AnyConnect Essential license. is it still possible for the unit to be the standby unit?
below is the license capture from both of the unit.
Running ASA: Licensed features for this platform: Maximum Physical Interfaces : Unlimited Maximum VLANs : 150
We have recently got 2 of our Cisco ASA 5520 firewalls through RMA. These are supposed to run in a Active/Active Failover Pair. There was only 1 RMA request that was opened for both the firewalls. We have received only 1 Activation key for this RMA request for both the firewalls. Just want to check with you if this Activation key will work on both firewalls or do we need a get a seperate one for the other box.
I have a pair of ASA5510 currently running as a failover pair. For some reason we need to move one of the firewall to another site, is there any best practice on splitting up the failover pair then I can re-configure the secondary unit offline?
I'm thinking to power down the secondary unit, unplug it from the network totally then erase the configuration on the secondary unit on console so I can re-configure it. For the primary unit, I will disable the faiolver config by "no failover" on the primary unit. Is that necessarily all thing for splitting up the failover cluster?
I have one ASA 5520 up and runnign, with complete configuration (ssl customization, DAP, CSD...) with bunch of files on flash drive, etc. I am using software 8.3Now I received one 5520 that I want to use failover, it is with 8.3, I will make sure that ASDM is also the same on both...
So, my question is how to make my running ASA to become primary and to push all info (config, files on flash, etc) to new ASA?
I found few examples, but nothing tells me how to force one ASA to be the source for sync.
I currently have two 5540's in an Active/Standby pair. The primary unit failed on February 12th, so the secondary ASA is now the active one. My question is this - we have made a lot of changes since February 12th and I am planning on fixing this failover issue over the weekend. Will the secondary (now active) FW sync it's config to the non-active FW, or will the failed FW sync it's out-of-date config - removing any changes that we've made in the last month or so.
we are running two failover pairs of asa (5510, 5505) in two different locations in active/standby configurations.Is it possible to access the inside ip of the standby unit via vpn terminated by the active unit? It's only for monitoring.With our configuration here it is not.Is that possible in general?
I have ASA-SM failover pair in two Catalyst 6500 switches. I send from switch to ASA-SM management VLAN 1234 to admin context for management purposes. I have another 3 contexts on ASA-SM. Can I have same managemenet VLAN1234 on each ASA-SM context? Can it work?
Our customer has purchased 2 x L-ASA-AC-E-5520= Anyconnect Essentials VPN Licenses (750 Users)Ive installed both activated licenses as per the cisco guides, I didnt get any errors on the install. I did a reload on both, they are both back up and running as active/standby but when I do a sh ver the license still shows "ASA 5520 VPN Plus License"Am I being dumb and has this worked successfully or should it not now display Anyconnect when I do a sh ver?
I discover an issue with my CISCO ASA 5550 because I'm looking at the vlans that I have configured and some vlans on the Stand by device had not an IP address configured, checking the configuration of the failover
I am having a curious problem with two Cisco ASA 5550. They are configured in Active/Standby failover and in routed mode.The problem is: I cannot connect via SSH to the ACTIVE unit, only to the STANDBY. If a switchover is forced the problem is still the same. because it happens both with the primary and the secondary unit.It is not a L2 or a transport problem, because I can ping or access both units via ASDM.
According to Cisco, one of the ASAs must have an Unrestricted License [URL]:
"On the PIX/ASA Security appliance platform, at least one of the units must have an unrestricted (UR) license. The other unit can have a Failover Only Active-Active (FO_AA) license, or another UR license. Units with a Restricted license cannot be used for failover, and two units with FO_AA licenses cannot be used together as a failover pair."I am unfamiliar with the different ASA licenses, so with my current license, I am unable to enable failover on my two ASAs. Here is a snippet of the "show version" output on one of my ASAs (they are the same as far as licenses go):
I am trying think of a better way to provide redundancy on some internally protected networks. We maintain our own WAN/backbone between our primary site and backup site. Is it possible to have two Cisco ASA 5550s in setup for failover at completely different sites as long the networks connected are available?
I've two Cisco ASA 5550 firewall. I'm don't have much knowlege on configuring this kind of firewall. I need configuring these firewall for simple NAT. I have 3 public IP address. I would like to allow server's inside of the firewall to be able to connect to internet using private address. A basic NAT. Also need to configure some port forwarding. We've bought two firewall for the Active/Active failover support. How can i configure this through ASDM? My ASDM version is 5.2.
I am a bit unclear as to the upgrade path I should take - I have 2 ASA 5510s in active/standby running 8.0(4)34 and would like to upgrade to 8.2.5. Do I need to first upgrade to 8.0.(5) before upgrading to 8.2.5, or can I just jump straight to 8.2.5?
I'll be upgrading an HA pair of ASA 5520s next week, and wanted to clarify the procedure. I read "Upgrading an Active/Standby Failover Configuration" at [URL] which suggests placing the image on both units, updating boot statements, then issuing failover reload-standby. But I was wondering if there's a way to a way to be a bit safer. I'd like to modify the standby unit, without affecting the config on the active. So I'd like to modify the boot statement on the standby without modifying the active config. That way incase there's a problem and the active reboots, it won't upgrade.
Can I modify the config on the standby without affecting the active? Then I'd like to test the newly upgraded unit with our production traffic. Would that simply be no failover active, and then once the standby becomes active -- test traffic? Once everything is okay, I would upgrade the second unit, and fail traffic back.
Can I upgrade Active/standby pair from 7.2(4) to 8.0(5)25 directly or need to upgrade to 8.0.2/4 first? Upgrade an Active/Standby Failover ConfigurationComplete these steps in order to upgrade two units in an Active/Standby failover configuration:Download the new software to both units, and specify the new image to load with the boot system command.Refer to Upgrade a Software Image and ASDM Image using CLI for more information.Reload the standby unit to boot the new image by entering the failover reload-standby command on the active unit as shown below:active#failover reload-standbyWhen the standby unit has finished reloading and is in the Standby Ready state, force the active unit to fail over to the standby unit by entering the no failover active command on the active unit.active#no failover activeNote: Use the show failover command in order to verify that the standby unit is in the Standby Ready state.Reload the former active unit (now the new standby unit) by entering the reload command:newstandby#reloadWhen the new standby unit has finished reloading and is in the Standby Ready state, return the original active unit to active status by entering the failover active command:newstandby#failover activeThis completes the process of upgrading an Active/Standby Failover pair.
[code] I would like to the ASA5510 Base license upgrade to Security Plus license. But after the upgrade is still the license of the Base.I think I was wrong option selected in the process of upgrading, how should I do to be successful upgrade
I have a couple of ASA5520 and ASA5550, and I wanted to know if it is worth it to upgrade the software from 8.2(4) to 8.2(5)? Because of the RAM I cannot upgrade to 8.3 for now.
I should upgrade ASA 5550 with nat controller enabled, from 7.2 to 8.x, I've been reading nat is differently configured up from release 8.3. So I choosed to upgrade to 8.2 release.
I am planning the upgrade of an ASA 5550 Active/Passive cluster from 8.0 to 8.2 according to the "zero downtime upgrade" documentation available in the web.
I do not have another cluster for comprehensive testing, but I executed a simple migration procedure on a tiny 5505 and neither licensing features nor the configuration (the command sintax) were affected by this process. I know this is something to care about if you go to 8.3, but this is not my case.I browsed the release notes of 8.2(5) and no special disclaimer was found by me with respect to this release. So everything should work just fine, but I would like to double check for input with respect to these two subjects:
1.Will the licensed features (vpn, concurrent connections, etc) be preserved? 2. Will the configuration be preserved ?
when I shut down the inside interface Gi 1/1 of the left firewall(Active firewall), It failed to failover. but when I shut down the Gi 1/12 of the Core 1 switch, The firewall failover very well.
I followed this guide but I was not able to failover. [URL]
how can I configure so that when the Gi 1/1 or Gi 1/0 interface goes down, it can failover ? Code...
I want to implement Active/Standby cluster with a pair of 5550 ASAs and I have a licensing question. Here is the "sh activation-key detail" output from both devices...
ASA1:
sh activation-key detail: Serial Number: XXXXX No active temporary key. Running Activation Key: XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
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This platform has an ASA 5550 VPN Premium license.The flash activation key is the SAME as the running key.So it looks obvious that I'll have to upgrade the first ASA to support 25 SSL VPN Peers in order to build HA cluster, right?Now I want to know do I need the "ASA5505-SSL25-K9" license or something else.
Is it possible to upgrade a c3750-stack one member at a time to avoid downtime? I need to keep L3-functionality up.
If I have one etherchannel from access-switch (2 channel-ports in 3750, in different stack-members), my 3750-stack as a distribution layer switch, and another etherchannel (also spread over multiple stack members) to core, can I upgrade the entire stack without traffic interruption?
When we had 8.2.2, we bought a Mobile license to make the iPads running AnyConnect happy. I applied it, but since we'd only purchased one license, it broke failover. 8.4 lets you share tracking licenses, and since we were planning on the upgrade to 8.4.x anyway, I figured no big deal, I'll get that straightened out when I do the upgrade.
Did the upgrade this weekend, and I still can't get things happy, the boxes don't see one-another:
Here's a show failover on the primary:
Failover OnFailover unit PrimaryFailover LAN Interface: failover GigabitEthernet0/3 (up)Unit Poll frequency 1 seconds, holdtime 15 seconds Interface Poll frequency 5 seconds, holdtime 25 seconds Interface Policy 1Monitored Interfaces 6 of 160
