ASA IOS upgrades

Question

Hi All,
I'm looking for some information and the benefits of others expereince. I'm looking to upgrade 2 ASAs, 5520 & 5510 to IOS Version 8.6(1)2. The ASAs are ASA 5520 Version 8.0(5)
ASA 5510 Version 7.2(4)33
Has anyone taken on such a task?? If so what were the challenges involved with such and upgrade
Lookign forward to any guidance I can get with this.
Thanks
Deena

Answer 1

You can't upgrade the ASA5500 series to version 8.6.x.
Version 8.6.x is meant to be just the new ASA5500-X series.
Here is the release notes for your reference:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa84/release/notes/asarn86.html
For the existing ASA5500 series (inc. 5510 and 5520), you can upgrade it to the latest version of 8.4.x.
Pls kindly be advised from version 8.3 onwards, you would need to have the upgraded memory on your ASA, and there are major feature change from version 8.3 onwards (ie: NAT and ACL in particular).
Here is the memory requirement for version 8.3 and above:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa83/release/notes/asarn83.html#wp310503
Here is the complete release notse for version 8.3:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa83/release/notes/asarn83.html
(Pls check out the new feature section).
And here is the release notes for version 8.4:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa84/release/notes/asarn84.html
Hope that helps.