This guide will take you through the steps required to upgrade the compact flash in a Cisco ASA 5505. This can be useful in a couple of scenarios. Firstly, you may like to take advantage of “bufferwrap” and store months of ASA logs in flash. Alternatively, you may be replacing damaged flash memory in the device.
There are a few interesting facts about the guts of the 5505. Firstly, the CF is accessible, contrary to what Cisco’s official documentation tells us. The other nice thing is that it takes standard Compact Flash Memory Cards, just like the ones you have for your PDA or Camera.
The really daft bit is that Cisco charge nearly £400 for a 256Mb compact flash card, when in reality, any will work. You can currently buy a 4 gig card for around £17, thats a hell of a saving.
To start with, you need to open your ASA up. This is done entirely at your own risk, but is a simple operation. Anybody who has experience of building PCs will be familiar with the components of the 5505. It basically has a Motherboard, CPU, Memory and compact flash. It isnt a million miles away from being a PC.
Start by removing the 3 screws pictured below:
Once the screws are removed, the case should lift up first at the back, and then tilt forward and off entirely. Be careful here, you dont want to kill anything.
Now you can see the components, the Compact flash is easy to spot and is pictured below:
All that remains is for you to gently push the compact flash card out of its socket with a small flat-head screwdriver. I find it easiest to push the left side a little, then the right and repeat until it pops out.
At this point you are going to need a compact flash card reader to make things easier.
Put the Cisco Compact Flash Card in the reader and attach to your PC. Go to control panel and folder options. In here you need to be in the “View” tab and select the “show hidden files and folders” radio button. You also need to deselect “Hide protected operating system files”.
The reason why this is necessary is that the ASA activation key is stored in a hidden folder on the flash card.
Now browse to your compact flash card, selected all and copy the contents somewhere safe, as well as onto your new compact flash card.
Now all you have to do is insert your new Compact Flash card, reassemble the ASA and power on the device. You may need to reapply your config at this point.
When the device is started, do a “show ver”. You should get an output similar to this: “Internal ATA Compact Flash, 512MB”
Note: If you do not have a compact flash card reader you can still perform the upgrade. You will need to write down the activation key of your ASA (show ver displays this). You will then need to use a TFTP server to transfer the ASA image and other files!
Entries (RSS)
January 7th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Excellent article. I done mine a while back without the help of this site, but only found this site recently! thanks for the info!
January 7th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Thanks for stopping by Simon, glad you liked the article
Cheers,
January 7th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I just put 512 on mine. now I wonder if we can get the RAM upgraded:)
January 7th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
BTW I left a comment on my friends site if you care to look:
http://www.breezy.ca/?q=node/258
Breezy is run by a friend - Canadas Finest: Eric Stewart.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
OK now I have done it.
I took the DIMM out to inspect it. it is a 256Mb 184 DIMM made by SMART Modular Technologies
I had 2 KingstonKVR400X64CA3/512 DIMMs from an old PC i had stripped out. and took the plunge……
Hardware: ASA5505, 512 MB RAM, CPU Geode 500 MHz
Internal ATA Compact Flash, 512MB
Oops. Thanks Cisco for the Upgrade:)
January 8th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Hi Simon,
Very nice!
Already tried it but couldnt get it working with the memory I had spare, although it did look funny when in place, probably due to the gold heat spreaders on it
Pictures to follow 
I was going to try and buy some compatible memory, but Smart didnt appear to have a retail arm, and it was a bit hit and miss as to the type. A lot of search engine results gave me one answer, but Smarts official product list didnt match at the time!
Thanks for posting, very interesting
January 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
As promised
http://cisconews.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/cisco-asa-5505/pimpmyasa2.jpg
http://cisconews.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/cisco-asa-5505/pimpmyasa.jpg
January 8th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Checked the breezy article, thanks for the link back!
One other thing about the 5505 that I never got time to check into, is that the connector inside the SSC slot looks very similar to the new VWICs….
Could potentially mean more interfaces/functionality.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
your ram maybe too fast. mine is PC3200 though tbh the original RAM looks to be PC2100/PC2700 I have emailed Smart to see if they can supply the correct spec of the RAM. what size of ram did you put in it? it may only take 512 max I dont really know, all I know is mine works so far.
The link I gave has more info on RAM and similar products that smart have (last 4 digits are different) I suspect the type of ram smart use is either “hidden” for cisco use only or has been superceeded by newer ram chips they make.
the model on my original RAM is: SG5643285D8N6F0IC0
is this the same as yours?
January 8th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
quick update the ram chips on the DIM have a serial number of: HYB250256800BT-5
search for this seems to show the chip is most likely from Infineon though it has “Q lmonds” as a name on the ram chip.
Googling HYB250256800BT-5 seems to show it is is 400Mhz which is PC3200
January 8th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Hi Simon,
Yes it is pc3200/DDR 400. Here are my notes from when I did some digging:
Part Number = SG5643285D8N6FOIC0
Description: 184P-DDR-256MB-PC3200
Appears to be low profile. Above confirms that memory is standard pc3200.
Closest match to above ID on smarts website = SG5643285D8N6UU 256MB 1.25″ (heigh/profile) 32Mx64 32Mx8 TSOP
184 PIN - DDR SDRAM Unbuffered Non-ECC DIMM.
It is worth noting that although the standard memory is half height, full size Dimms will fit without fouling the metal shielding on the underside of the ASA’s lid. My OCZ certainly did anyway
I tried a stick of crucial with the same results. Status light flashing orange and no boot.
January 8th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I received an update from Smart today.
SG5643285D8N6FOIC0 is a module we only make for Cisco. We do not sell to anyone except Cisco. But here are the specs: 256MB PC3200 UB NON-ECC CL3 DIMM. Hope that helps.
I have tried 4 PC3200 sticks. 2 were 512 the other two were 1Gb. all booted fine, but the ASA5505 only recognises 512Mb of the 1Gb Stick. ALL memory was Kingston Value Ram. what voltage is your ram?
btw you have msn? mcmntl at ntlworld.com
January 8th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Hi Simon,
The OCZ was a 1Gig stick, pc3200. Think the voltage was probably more than the 1.8 that the standard memory no doubt uses. I’m sure I will have a machine to cannibalise somewhere
January 9th, 2008 at 12:18 am
you need a 2.5v or 2.6v compatable stick. newer ram sticks are approx 2.45v-2.85v and can handle different voltage levels.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Rich, BTW what ASA version of software you running?
January 9th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Hi Simon,
Running 8.0(3) at the moment. Seems very stable although I havent had a chance to properly check it out to be fair.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hey Rich
yeah WebVPN and Secure Desktop are a really nice feature. btw when are the forums due to start up?
January 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Soon hopefully. One or two things to sort out before we can kick them off
January 19th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Well have been running the ASA with 512 for some time now. I sent a friend a spare 512Mb stick and he also confirms the ASA5505 works
January 19th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Excellent
Wonder if this has an effect on the throughput and max connections figures?
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Yes, the number of max connections would be the most interesting thing to see. I guess that it is limited by software though because you can simply buy a more expensive license to increase the limit. But please test this
January 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
yep my colleague at http://www.breezy.ca has a Security Plus license, this is the only way to increase max connections afaik.
he also confirms the 512Mb upgrade. http://www.breezy.ca/?q=node/262
as for testing, care to tell me how I confirm 25000 connections on my wan?
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 am
You are going to need some sort of load testing software/device I guess. Best alternative would be file sharing software that is reliant on multiple sources like bit torrent or Edonkey/Emule. With enough files downloading at once you could get into the 10’s of thousands very quickly. Then its just a matter of doing a “sh conn” and seeing what happens
Managed to upgrade the ram in mine with some Hynix DDR too
February 7th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Excellent news!
February 13th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Memory:
Installed Corsair PC3200 512MB (30 euro), the shop sold me VS512MB400 which was not what I wanted (VS512MB400C3 which is CL3). However it works just fine, CL3 or not.
Flash:
Cheapest and slowest Kingston CF/1GB (9 euro) works just fine - has anyone tried larger sized CF, like 2GB, 4GB, or even 8GB or 16 in the ASA5505?
February 13th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Not tried anything larger than 512Mb. Probably going beyond the limits of usefulness at that point. I think 512 gives you enough to store a large amount of logs to flash. It also allows you to keep a few versions of ASA software on there for labbing/testing or for roll-back in the event of issues.
ASA software is basically Linux (confirmed by Cisco) so I cant see any issues with it addressing that amount of flash. The only thing that would hold it back is hardware I guess.
When the modules come out for the 5505 I can see the larger CF cards and more memory becoming much more useful
February 13th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
@Rich (about larger CF cards)
True, you can’t do much expect logging with larger cards at this moment - but there is one more reason to know whether this is possible:
I couldn’t find any CF cards smaller then 1GB in the shops today - and someone - probably me
- will google this article in a few years time to see whether they can fit ASA image 13.1(4) in the old 5505 they have lying around, and wants to know whether it will work with the 16GB flash card they can buy for 5 dollars…
February 14th, 2008 at 6:35 am
I haven’t tried anything else apart from a 512MB CF card. the only reason for this was its price. £3.99 some difference since CIsco in UK are looking over £400 for the same size of CF Card.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Paul, since the format of the CF card is FAT 16GB is not supported. at max the size supported would be 2GB for FAT unless the ASA supports FAT with 64k cluster sizes, which is a maximum of 4GB but most systems do not support this cluster size. to be safe512MB is tried and tested. 1GB or 2GB would be my maximum I would go for. I know the DIMM socket seems to only support 512MB. a 1GB stick was only seen as 512MB on my ASA5505
April 21st, 2008 at 9:54 am
It struck me that since the activation code is on the cf-card, maybe it is possible to copy a cf-card from an ASA with a security plus-license and get the full package?
Or maybe the activation key has to match the serial number which is elsewhere?
Is it then possible to change the license number since this is somewhere in software/firmware?
April 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
oops meant serial, not license
April 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Hi Dag,
The activation keys are actually device specific and can not be unlocked without a valid service contract and the purchase of a License. Copying the license over will just fail and knock you back down to the base feature set again.
Cheers,
April 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Thanks for the info, I was able to upgrade to 1gb;
Hardware: ASA5505, 256 MB RAM, CPU Geode 500 MHz
Internal ATA Compact Flash, 1024MB
Only issue I had was the copying of the hidden files didnt work for the activation key, I had to reapply it.
Other than that, worked great.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
1gig, Nice
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Maybe this is out of topic, but in case someone from ASA 5510 (or higher) runs into this page who is looking for memory upgrade, the ASA 5510 is capable to recognize up to 1GB (1024 MB) on version 8.0(2) using any 184-pin DIMM stick.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Well I purchased a stick of 1GB Kingston KVR400X64C3A/1G and put in in my ASA and it showed up fine, booted up, and showed 1024MB of ram. I had also copied the contents of the flash onto a 1GB flash (Kingston CF/1GB). I then upgraded my license key to the one supporting AES and copied the files to the old compact flash and tried booting off of it to verify that it would show the new license key and the ASA wouldn’t boot. I received the same error as user Rich…no boot and a blinking orange status light. I’m curious if it’s the RAM itself, the amount of RAM (1GB), or something with the files on flash.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Hi Euphrates,
I would bet the farm that its the ram. Try this: When the orange light flashes, power off the device and leave it turned off for 10 minutes. Then power it back on and see if it boots. I have seen similar with a 512 stick. Clearly this is no use for a production environment though!
May 25th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Thanks for the tip. I tested it out however it doesn’t work. Looks like the ASA doesn’t jive either with this memory or the size. I don’t think it’s the size cause it originally booted up with that memory without any problems. I’m going to try something and see if it works.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Well, figured that I’d try a factory reset and then I tried putting the factory files on the CF so that the hardware would come up like it was factory fresh. No luck. It seems I’ll have to purchase some memory. First, I’ll see if I can try some 512MB ram and then 1024MB.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I swapped the P4 Celeron proc for a real P4 with same specs on a production 5510. Stable and increased performance.