Full English Description for Cisco ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9
1. Official Short Order Description
Cisco ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9: 2RU rack-mount modular next-generation Adaptive Security Appliance (NGFW) from Cisco ASA 5585-X series, base firewall SSP-10 blade with permanent Security Plus K9 unrestricted license, no integrated FirePOWER IPS blade pre-installed. Equipped with 8 built-in 10/100/1000 Gigabit copper ports, 2 native SFP+ 10GE fiber uplinks, two dedicated out-of-band Gigabit management ports, dual redundant hot-swappable AC power supply bays, two half-width SSP expansion slots supporting firewall SSP or FirePOWER IPS CX/SSP blades, running ASA OS 9.x mainstream releases. Built on Cisco Adaptive Security Algorithm, it delivers wire-speed stateful SPI firewall, full DES/3DES/AES strong-encryption IKEv1/IKEv2 IPsec/DMVPN/FlexVPN, AnyConnect Premium SSL/DTLS remote access VPN, NAT/PAT, unified communications TLS proxy, VoIP fixup inspection, multi-context virtual firewalls, and dual Active/Standby & Active/Active stateful failover with chassis clustering. Performance benchmarks: up to 4 Gbps cleartext stateful firewall throughput, 1,000,000 maximum concurrent TCP/UDP connections, 1 Gbps hardware-accelerated 3DES/AES VPN throughput, supporting 5,000 simultaneous IPsec IKE peers and 1024 logical routed VLAN interfaces. K9 license removes DES-only limits, unlocks unlimited TLS proxy sessions, full multi-context segmentation and complete high availability/clustering functions. Managed via serial console, embedded ASDM web GUI, Cisco Security Manager (CSM), Syslog and SNMPv3. Fully End-of-Sale (June 1, 2018) and End-of-Support (Aug 31, 2022) obsolete hardware, superseded by Firepower 4100/9300 modular NGFW platforms.
2. Complete Detailed Product Overview
Product Line Positioning
The Cisco ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9 is the entry modular chassis of the ASA 5585-X high-density datacenter NGFW family, positioned below SSP-20/40/60 higher-performance variants. It targets medium-to-large multi-segment enterprise core DMZ edges, regional remote access VPN aggregation hubs and small MSP multi-tenant colocation environments requiring flexible modular scalability, native 10GE fiber uplinks and carrier-grade chassis clustering.
The K9 suffix stands for factory pre-activated full Security Plus unrestricted license, eliminating all DES-only limitations of K8 base SKUs, enabling unlimited TLS proxy capacity, multi-context virtual firewalls and load-balanced Active/Active failover. The ASA 5585-X platform reached EoS June 1, 2018 and EoL Aug 31, 2022; no official firmware patches, vulnerability fixes or Cisco TAC technical support are available today, replaced by Firepower modular security appliancesCisco.
Physical Hardware & Dual Half-Width SSP Modular Architecture
Form Factor & Mechanical Specifications
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Standard 2RU 19-inch rack-mount metal chassis, rack rails included; optional rubber feet for standalone desktop placement
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Dual hot-swappable redundant universal AC power supply bays (100–240V auto-switch), single PSU factory standard, second PSU as field upgrade
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Variable-speed intelligent redundant cooling fans with front-to-back airflow, NEBS Level 3 compliant for telecom rack deployment
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Front panel multi-color diagnostic LED array: Power, System Fault, SSP blade status, global traffic activity, PSU health, fan fault
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Integrated physical security lock slot for anti-tampering protection
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Hardware core (SSP-10 firewall blade): Single multi-core security processor, fixed 6 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 8 GB compact flash storage for ASA OS, configurations and persistent event logsCisco
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Two independent half-width SSP expansion slots (Slot0 pre-loaded SSP-10 firewall blade, Slot1 empty for optional FirePOWER IPS SSP/CX content security blades)
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Dual rear USB 2.0 ports for external flash configuration backup, firmware upgrades and log offloading
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Environmental compliance: 0°C to +40°C operating temperature, 10%–90% non-condensing humidity, altitude up to 3050m; UL 60950-1, CE, FCC Class A, FIPS 140-2 Level 1 certified
Rear Panel Fixed Port Layout
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8 × Built-in 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Auto-MDI/MDIX RJ45 Copper Ports (GigabitEthernet0/0 – 0/7)
Native copper Gigabit ports for internal LAN, external WAN and multi-isolated DMZ server zone deployment without extra I/O modules
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2 × SFP+ 10 Gigabit Fiber Slots (GigabitEthernet0/8, 0/9)
Supports SFP+ transceivers for long-distance 10G backbone interconnections between datacenters or upstream carriers
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2 × Dedicated 10/100 Fast Ethernet Out-of-Band Management Ports (Management0/0, Management0/1)
Fully segregated management interfaces isolated from production data plane traffic for secure device administration
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RJ45 RS-232 Serial Console Port
Out-of-band CLI management at default 9600 baud for initial bootstrap, password recovery and offline bulk configuration editing
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DB-15 Dedicated Inter-Chassis Stateful Failover Serial Port
Used for real-time session synchronization between redundant ASA5585-X chassis pairs to retain active VPN/NAT/UC sessions during sub-second failover
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Dual IEC AC power input sockets for hot-swappable redundant power supply units
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Two rear USB 2.0 storage ports for external flash archival and OS image deployment
Supported Optional Half-Width SSP Expansion Blades
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Firewall SSP-10/20/40/60: Upgradeable higher-performance firewall processing blades
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FirePOWER SSP-10/20/40/60: Integrated next-generation IPS, AVC application control, malware protection, URL filtering threat defense
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CX SSP-10/20: Unified content security (anti-spam, antivirus, web filtering, cloud security proxy)
Core Performance & K9 Security Plus Full License Capabilities
Throughput & Connection Benchmarks (SSP-10 Blade)
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Maximum cleartext stateful firewall throughput: 4 GbpsCisco
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Maximum concurrent TCP/UDP connection table entries: 1,000,000Cisco
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Maximum new connections per second: 40,000Cisco
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IPsec VPN throughput (full hardware-accelerated 3DES/AES): Up to 1 GbpsCisco
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NGIPS throughput with FirePOWER SSP-10 blade: Up to 2 GbpsCisco
K9 Unrestricted License Exclusive Advantages vs K8 Base DES License
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Encryption suite: Full native DES, 3DES-168, AES-128/AES-192/AES-256 strong enterprise crypto (K8 locked to DES weak encryption only)
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Simultaneous IPsec IKEv1/IKEv2 tunnels (site-to-site + remote access): Max 5,000 permanent peers (hard cap on K8)
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Logical routed VLAN interfaces: Up to 1024 separate security zones (identical hardware VLAN limit across K8/K9)
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TLS proxy sessions for encrypted SIP/SCCP unified communications inspection: Unlimited chassis-wide capacity (1000 hard cap on K8 base license)
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High Availability: Supports both stateless Active/Standby and load-balanced Active/Active multi-context failover (K8 limited to Active/Standby redundant pairs only)
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Multi-context virtual firewalls: Up to 250 independent isolated virtual security contexts (completely disabled on K8 DES license)
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Native multi-chassis firewall/VPN clustering and load balancing fully enabled for distributed WAN hub aggregation
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AnyConnect Premium SSL/DTLS remote access peers: 2 permanent base seats, expandable via separate add-on SSL peer license packs
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Internal LAN host capacity: Unlimited, no hard-coded user count throttling
Full Integrated Security & Networking Feature Suite (ASA OS 9.x Supported Releases)
1. Stateful Adaptive Security Algorithm Firewall
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Wire-speed full stateful packet inspection tracking all TCP/UDP connection states to eliminate stateless filter bypass attacks
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Object-group based inbound/outbound ACLs for granular multi-zone traffic permission/denial rule management
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Multi-vector enterprise-grade DoS/DDoS mitigation: SYN flood protection, port scan detection, full TCP normalization, malformed packet filtering, IP spoof suppression
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Layer 7 fixup protocol inspection engines for FTP, H.323, SIP, SCCP Skinny, RTSP, NetBIOS to preserve NAT traversal for VoIP and multimedia workloads
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Native Transparent Layer 2 firewall mode for inline datacenter security deployment without network re-addressing
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Third-party URL web content filtering integration (expandable via optional CX SSP blade)
2. Standards-Based Multi-Protocol VPN Suite
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Site-to-site LAN-to-LAN IPsec tunnels for secure inter-datacenter private backbone connectivity over public internet
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Remote access IPsec VPN for legacy Cisco VPN Client software teleworker tunnels
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Clientless SSL VPN + AnyConnect Premium SSL/DTLS remote access for browser/software-based global mobile workforce connectivity
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Dual IKEv1/IKEv2 key exchange protocol support, full X.509 digital certificate enrollment via SCEP for scalable multi-site enterprise deployments
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GRE tunnel encapsulation for routed non-IPsec traffic across VPN fabrics
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Dedicated on-board hardware crypto acceleration to eliminate CPU bottlenecks for 5,000 concurrent IPsec tunnels
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Native multi-chassis VPN clustering and load balancing for distributed regional remote access hub deployments
3. Broadband & Datacenter Routing / NAT Services
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Static one-to-one NAT, dynamic NAT pools, PAT port address translation for multi-tenant public IP sharing
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Native PPPoE client for large-scale broadband ISP aggregation deployments
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Local DHCP server supporting up to 4096 internal IP address leases for wired LAN endpoints
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Static routing, policy-based routing (PBR), BGP, OSPF, EIGRP dynamic interior/exterior routing protocol support
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Dual-stack native IPv4 protocol stack, limited partial IPv6 functionality on ASA OS 9.x
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Local persistent DNS caching to reduce external DNS lookup latency and bandwidth consumption
4. Threat Defense & Unified Security Stack
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Base built-in signature-based IDS engine; advanced next-generation IPS functionality requires optional FirePOWER SSP blade with full malware/attack signature databases
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Automatic dynamic host blacklisting to quarantine malicious source IP addresses after detected exploit, worm and brute-force attack breaches
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Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (URPF) strict/loose anti-spoof filtering to block forged source IP traffic in multi-tenant environments
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Persistent local flash event logging + remote Syslog export to centralized SIEM platforms for regulatory compliance audit trails
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Encrypted administrative access only: SSHv2 remote CLI, HTTPS ASDM web GUI, encrypted SNMPv3 secure device monitoring
5. AAA Access Control & Audit Logging
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Complete AAA authentication, authorization and accounting via external RADIUS and TACACS+ servers for multi-tenant segregated administrative access control
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Local user credential database for standalone device emergency administrative login
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Comprehensive logging architecture supporting buffered flash storage, USB flash log offloading and remote Syslog archival
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SNMPv3 secure monitoring for real-time device health, throughput utilization, PSU/fan fault and VPN tunnel status alert reporting
6. Application-Aware Hierarchical QoS & Bandwidth Management
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Four-level priority queuing to prioritize real-time voice/video unified communications over recreational streaming, SaaS and P2P file-sharing traffic
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Per-port bandwidth shaping and policing on all copper Gigabit/10GE fiber WAN/LAN/DMZ interfaces to eliminate congestion across multi-tenant segments
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DSCP marking preservation across IPsec and SSL VPN tunnels for consistent end-to-end enterprise QoS policy enforcement
Management & Configuration Tools
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ASA CLI Console: Full IOS-style command-line interface via serial console or encrypted SSHv2 remote access for bulk scripting and advanced troubleshooting
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Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM): Embedded HTTPS graphical web GUI for single-chassis visual configuration, real-time traffic dashboards, VPN tunnel monitoring and security event reporting
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Cisco Security Manager (CSM): Centralized enterprise policy management platform for bulk multi-ASA orchestration, mass firmware upgrades and cross-device compliance audit reporting
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TFTP + USB flash dual methods for OS firmware and full configuration backup/restore; offline config editing supported
Key Differentiators vs Related ASA Platforms
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vs ASA5585-X-SSP10-K8 Base DES License:
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Full unrestricted 3DES/AES strong encryption suite (K8 locked to DES weak crypto only)
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Unlimited TLS proxy sessions vs K8’s hard 1000 TLS proxy cap
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Enables up to 250 multi-context virtual firewalls and Active/Active load-balanced failover (K8 lacks both core carrier-grade features)
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vs ASA5585-X-SSP20-K9 Mid-Tier Model: Lower 4 Gbps firewall throughput (10 Gbps on SSP-20), 1 million concurrent sessions (2 million on SSP-20), single SSP-10 processing blade vs dual SSP-20 architecture
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vs Legacy ASA5580-20B/40B-K9: 2RU compact chassis with native integrated 10GE SFP+ ports (ASA5580 requires separate I/O expansion cards), dual SSP modular slots for integrated FirePOWER IPS blades, unified ASA/FirePOWER coexistence architecture
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vs Fixed-port ASA5550-K8/K9: Modular dual-blade expandable chassis with native 10GE fiber ports, higher 4 Gbps throughput and 1 million concurrent sessions, support for integrated FirePOWER threat defense blades
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vs Discontinued PIX-535: Modern unified ASA OS architecture, native SSL AnyConnect VPN, multi-context virtualization, modular IPS expansion and native 10GE datacenter uplink capability
Typical Historical Deployment Scenarios
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Medium multi-segment enterprise core gigabit internet edge firewall with isolated DMZ zones for web, email, application and cloud servers, supporting thousands of concurrent remote AnyConnect SSL VPN teleworkers
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Regional corporate IPsec/DMVPN aggregation hub aggregating hundreds of remote retail and branch office IPsec tunnels
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Small MSP multi-tenant colocation boundary security appliance with independent multi-context virtual firewall segmentation for segregated customer network traffic
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Active/Active redundant chassis pair for load-balanced multi-tenant remote access VPN services and zero-traffic-loss mission-critical disaster recovery continuity
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Legacy network lab training platform for ASA OS stateful firewall, optional FirePOWER next-gen IPS, multi-context virtual firewalls and native 10GE datacenter security architecture learning
3. E-commerce Short Marketing Description
Cisco ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9 Entry Modular 2RU Rack-Mount Next-Generation Adaptive Security Appliance, legacy ASA 5585-X series Security Plus unrestricted K9 chassis with eight built-in Gigabit copper ports, two native SFP+ 10GE fiber uplinks, dual dedicated Fast Ethernet management ports and one empty half-width SSP expansion slot for FirePOWER IPS/CX content security blades, running ASA OS 9.x firmware. K9 bundle unlocks full DES/3DES/AES strong encryption, unlimited internal host capacity, stateful SPI firewall, IPsec site-to-site/AnyConnect SSL remote access VPN, optional hardware inline IPS, NAT/PAT, PPPoE broadband aggregation, VoIP unified communications TLS proxy inspection, multi-context virtual firewalls and dual Active/Standby/Active/Active stateful failover with native chassis clustering. Up to 4 Gbps cleartext firewall throughput, 1,000,000 concurrent TCP/UDP sessions and 5,000 simultaneous IPsec VPN tunnels, managed via serial CLI, embedded ASDM web GUI and Cisco Security Manager. Obsolete end-of-support modular datacenter NGFW for medium enterprise multi-segment DMZ edges, regional remote access VPN aggregation and small MSP multi-tenant colocation deployments.
4. Product Catalog Keyword Tags
Cisco, ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9, ASA 5500 Series Modular Next-Generation Adaptive Security Appliance, Legacy 2RU Rack-Mount Stateful Inspection Firewall, 19-inch Rack-Mount Chassis, 8 × 10/100/1000 Gigabit Copper Auto-MDI/MDIX Ports, 2 × SFP+ 10GE Fiber Uplink Slots, Two Dedicated FastEthernet Out-of-Band Management Ports, Dual Half-Width SSP Expansion Slots, Pre-Loaded SSP-10 Firewall Blade, Optional FirePOWER SSP / CX SSP Service Blades, Dual USB 2.0 Storage Ports, RJ45 Serial Out-of-Band Console Port, DB-15 Inter-Chassis Stateful Failover Serial Port, Single Multi-Core Security Processor, 6144 MB DDR2 SDRAM, 8 GB Compact Flash Storage, Dual Hot-Swappable AC Power Supply Support, Variable-Speed Redundant Cooling Fans, Cisco Adaptive Security Algorithm ASA, ASA OS 9.x Final Supported Firmware, Stateful Packet Inspection SPI, 4 Gbps Max Cleartext Firewall Throughput, 1 Gbps Hardware-Accelerated 3DES/AES VPN Throughput, IPsec IKEv1/IKEv2 DMVPN FlexVPN Site-to-Site & AnyConnect SSL/DTLS Remote Access VPN, Full DES/3DES-AES Unrestricted Strong Encryption Suite, Optional FirePOWER SSP Next-Generation Inline NGIPS Intrusion Prevention, CX SSP Unified Web Filter/Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus Content Security, NAT PAT Static Dynamic Address Translation, PPPoE DSL Broadband Aggregation Client, VoIP H.323 SIP SCCP Skinny Fixup Protocol Inspection, Transparent Layer 2 Firewall Mode, Multi-Context Virtual Firewall Segmentation (Up to 250 Independent Contexts), Active/Standby & Active/Active Load-Balanced Stateful Failover Redundancy, Native Multi-Chassis Firewall/VPN Clustering & Load Balancing, 1024 Logical Routed VLAN Maximum (Security Plus License), 5,000 Max Simultaneous IPsec VPN Peers, Unlimited TLS Proxy UC Sessions, 1,000,000 Concurrent TCP/UDP Connections, ASDM Adaptive Security Device Manager Embedded Web GUI, Cisco Security Manager CSM Centralized Enterprise Policy Orchestration, Syslog SNMPv3 Secure Monitoring, Dual-Stack IPv4 / Limited IPv6 Native Support, Application-Aware Hierarchical QoS Scheduling, NEBS Level 3 FIPS 140-2 Level 1 Telecom Certified, End-of-Sale June 1 2018 End-of-Support Aug 31 2022 Obsolete Legacy Hardware, Security Plus K9 Unrestricted Upgrade Over ASA5585-X-SSP10-K8 DES Base License, Predecessor to Firepower 4100/9300 Next-Generation Firewall Series, Medium Enterprise Multi-Segment DMZ Internet Edge Security Gateway, Regional Large-Scale AnyConnect SSL VPN Aggregation Hub, Small MSP Multi-Tenant Colocation Boundary Modular Firewall
Naming Rule Explanation
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ASA: Adaptive Security Appliance, Cisco post-PIX unified firewall product family integrating stateful firewall, VPN and optional next-generation IPS threat defense services
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5585-X: Modular 2RU datacenter-focused chassis model within the legacy ASA 5500-X next-generation firewall series, supporting dual interchangeable SSP processing blades for scalable performance
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SSP10: SSP-10 security services processor blade identifier, entry-performance single-core firewall blade with 6 GB memory and 4 Gbps stateful throughput
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K9: Premium unrestricted Security Plus license identifier unlocking full 3DES/AES strong encryption, unlimited TLS proxy sessions, maximum multi-context virtual firewalls and Active/Active load-balanced failover; contrasted with K8 base DES-only restricted license
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Hardware Distinction Note: The ASA5585-X-SSP10-K9 uses a dual-slot modular chassis design supporting mixed firewall + FirePOWER IPS blade deployments, a key difference from fixed-port ASA 5500 series hardware. The platform is fully obsolete with no official Cisco firmware updates, vulnerability patches or TAC technical support available today.
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