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Cisco ASA – New Models Ahoy

6th March 2012 by 8 Comments

From the Release Notes for 8.6.1 – New Features:

We introduced support for the ASA 5512-X, ASA 5515-X, ASA 5525-X, ASA 5545-X, and ASA 5555-X.

Looks like the entire ASA family got replaced excepting the ASA 5585-X. I’m guessing this is related to the ASA CX announcement last week at the RSA conference.

Updated: Yes, here is the announcement that it’s ASA-CX Related

Can’t find any other meaningful data about performance and features though. I’m guessing this was a “real soon now” announcement where everything “works in Powerpoint”1

  1. as Ivan Pepelnjak says. ↩

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • C. Hayre

    There are a few links off of the ASA product page, including the following datasheet summary:

    http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps6032/ps6094/ps6120/at_a_glance_c45-701635.pdf

  • http://twitter.com/_N1x Rati Jokhadze

    [quote]Can’t find any other meaningful data about performance and features
    though. I’m guessing this was a “real soon now” announcement where
    everything “works in Powerpoint”[/quote]
    may helps
    https://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/prod_models_comparison.html#~tab-a

  • http://twitter.com/biglube Brian Lubelczyk

    The performance is about 3X the model it is replacing.  

  • http://twitter.com/bobmccouch Bob McCouch

    Looks like they include 6 Gbit interfaces and integrate IPS hardware now. Leaving a slot open for Ironport-on-a-card? I also notice that the 5512-X and 5515-X features look suspiciously like the difference between the ASA5510 Base license and Security Plus license. Hopefully they’re not forcing that licensing flexibility into a hardware purchase decision. I’ve had plenty of customers start with a 5510 Base and later add the Sec Plus feature set when they decide to add a second ASA and cluster them.

  • Mirek Hankus

    All new models are on “New Product Hold” till August (depends on model), so we have some time to get to know them

  • http://twitter.com/MrsYisWhy Mrs. Y.

    I’ve been watching this for a couple of weeks, and it sounds like they’re just jumping on the NextGen firewall bandwagon.  I guess better late than never….

  • Cristian

    One of the Cisco reps explained that the new firewall models have multiple CPUs. It’s about time for Cisco to finally take advantage of the developments in the processing world… The work can farmed out to groups of processors – some CPUs do the processing for firewalling, other do IPS, etc.
    The same design is used in Checkpoint and Palo Alto firewalls.

    • http://etherealmind.com Etherealmind

      I tend to the view that this is catchup technology overall. But it will still be useful to have this features and should improve the security posture of many companies if they choose to implement.

      Of course, a lot of security professionals will need to develop new security policies and that’s probably going to take five years.