Upgrade Pix from 6.3(5) to 8.0(4)

mwkirk · ‎10-12-2008

What is the best way to do the upgrade from 6.3(5) to 8.0(4)? The way I am reading it I am supposed to upgrade to 7.2 first and then upgrade to 8. Also, I need to do everything in monitor mode since I have PDM installed on the boxes correct? I did the same upgrade to 8.0(3) about 9 months ago for a different set of Pixes and for the life of me I don't think I ever upgraded to any 7 code and went straight to 8 and everything worked fine. Also, since the boxes are an active/standby pair I believe I need to just power down the FO unit, do the upgrade and test to make sure the Primary unit is fine, power down the primary, upgrade the FO.

Is that about the gist of it?

Matthew Warrick · ‎10-13-2008

Upgrading from 6.3 to anything is a big change by itself since the config gets converted and the flash gets reformatted. I don't remember reading that going from 6.3 to 8 is a valid upgrade path so I'd stick to the documentation:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa70/pix_upgrade/upgrade/guide/pixupgrd.html

It is not required to "power down" either of the units when performing an active/standby failover pair. Each PIX will require a single reload. The exact steps are outlined in the link above.