ASA 5505 with 8.3.1 and only 256MB RAM

[Pascal Blumenthal]

Hello

I have a 5505 ASA and I did a Software Upgrade trough the Assistant. I had 8.0.2 installed and now I have 8.3.1.

The ASA is now running with this new version but every time I login to the ASA, I get a message that the ASA doesn't

have enough RAM. We have 256MB of RAM and I didn't check the Release Notes about the System Requirements.

However, does anybody knows what happens if I continue to work with the newest version without upgrading the

memory to 512MB?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Pascal

[Adam Makovecz · Accepted solution]

Hi Pascal,

it is very important that you have the proper hardware requirements. Without enough memory the software will be unstable and cannot oparate as expected. This means you could experience strange behaviours in function, crashes and of course you cannot get support for them. Even it is possible that the ASA stuck in a bootloop.

Until you not downgrade the software version or upgrade the memory you will got

1. Presenting a message on the console at boot
2. Generating a Level 1 (Alert) syslog every 24 hours
3. Having ASDM alert the user to this issue
4. Prepending 'show version' with the console boot message

Here is the installation guide, even you can find a video here about it:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/hw/maintenance/guide/procs.html#wp1077990

cheers

Adam

PS: please mark this thread as answered if you think my post was helpful

[Pascal Blumenthal]

Hello Adam

Thank you for your quick answer.

I'll do a Downgrade to 8.0.5 which is the latest Version for ASA 5505 with 256MB of RAM.

Have a nice day.

Pascal

[kmccourt · Accepted solution]

You haven't said what license you have on your ASA 5505. If you look at the release notes, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa83/release/notes/asarn83.html, you will see that 256MB is OK so long as you don't have an unlimited hosts license or a Sec Plus with failover enabled license.

[Pascal Blumenthal]

Hi

You're right!

We have a Base license with 8 physical interfaces and no Failover so I'm fine with 8.3.1.

Thank you very much for your answer.

Regards,

Pascal

[Stephen Buck]

Pascal,

I'm running 3 different 5505s with 8.3.2, all with the base license.  Here is what we're seeing and is also documented in the release notes:

ASA 5505 #1 - base license with 10 users - runs with no problems and no warnings

ASA 5505 #2 - base license with 50 users - runs with no problems and no warnings

ASA 5505 #3 - base license with unlimited users - runs with no problems but receive the warning about not enough memory.  This has been running for the past week with no problems.  I believe the memory requirement is due to the potentially high number of connections that you might see with the unlimited user license.  We only see about 70 connections at once and don't have any issues, but keep in mind that you are not supported by Cisco if you're running the unlimited user license with 8.3.x.