NCM not recognizing 5525-X as ASA

Question

Good morning,

I'm in the process of onboarding our new Cisco ASA 5525-Xs into NPM/NCM and I noticed that NCM is not recognizing them as "Adaptive Security Appliance" for the device template in NCM. It is recognizing them as Cisco IOS so it's not disabling the terminal pager correctly.

I see how I can get around this by creating a copy of the device template and using the SYSOBJID that NPM shows, but is this something I should also let support know about?

ASA 5510 SYSOBJID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.669

ASA 5525-X SYSOBJID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.1408

I'm using NCM 7.5.1 at the moment until we can get our Orion server upgraded to new version of SQL Server.

Regards,

Keith

rschroeder · Answer

I've long had to avoid relying on NCM automatically recognizing ASA's and letting it choose the appropriate template.  That behavior is documented in Solarwinds' technical support site.

I always manually choose the my template for NCM, which I tweaked to ensure NCM uses the "copy system:running-config" command when downloading the startup config.

I also had to tweak the "ignore" feature to not throw alerts when it sees the difference between running and startup configs for PSK's that show up unencrypted with the above command.

It works like a champ.

kmillerusaf · Answer

Interestingly enough, the 5525-Xs show up as ASAs in NPM, they just aren't recognized as ASAs in NCM when trying to download the config.

I'm running 9.8(2) for what it's worth and NPM 12.1

Regards,

Keith

rschroeder · Answer

I discovered this same issue in October of 2017 after upgrading from NPM 12.0.1 to 12.2, with the accompanying upgrade of NCM.

I opened a Support case with SW, they investigated it, and said this is a Cisco problem, and I should wait for Cisco to fix ASA versions.

My response was that it wasn't a problem for NPM 12.0.1, why is it an issue with 12.2.  I did not receive a satisfactory answer.

As a result, my ASA 5525-X's show up as "Hardware Unknown" in NPM.  Not a satisfactory state of affairs, and I'm hoping SW will work around this "Cisco issue" in a way that compares to how NPM discovered and worked with these ASA's back in 12.0.1.

Perhaps if you open a new case on the issue you'll discover a new solution or work around or hotfix.  If you document your findings here, many may benefit from your experiences.