ASDM help

[tahequivoice]

Since I manage and maintain at least 100 ASA's of different images and ASDM versions, I am unable to install ASDM on my PC, however under programs in the start bar I have a list of links for most of them. A few though are broken, How do I add them? It looks like these are from my cache, but I want to have premanent links for them.  Is there a way to be able to do this when there are multiple versions of ASDM out there? 

Another question, does 6.4.5 work with 8.0 code?

[Marvin Rhoads]

You can install the latest (ASDM 6.4(7)) on your PC and use it to manage all 8.0-8.4 ASAs. In fact, it's the recommended version. Reference this listing.

Managing 7.x ASAs with ASDM from the same machine is trickier due to Java version incompatibilites. When I absolutely have to manage a 7.x box with the GUI I prefer to use a separate PC or a VM with the old Java (1.6 or earlier) that ASA 5.x requires. I usually just do what I need via the CLI on them. (Hopefully that is mainly getting them ready to upgrade to 8.x.)

[tahequivoice]

Well, 6.4(7) actually installed, thats a first, the previous versions all failed to install on my machine for some odd reason. However, if an ASA is not loaded with 6.4(x), I still cannot pull it up in ASDM unless I go to the web interface of the device and load it from there, sort of defeats the purpose.

[Marvin Rhoads]

Yes, ASDM needs to be present on the managing computer as well as the managed ASA.

You should be able to use ASDM 6.4(7) on the computer(s) and an earlier ASDM in the 6.x train - I've done that though I can't say that I've tested it exhaustively.

Preferable is to have 6.4(7) in both places (and specified as the "asdm image" on the ASA). It's a no service impact change on the managed ASA to put the recommended current version of ASDM on it.