Thursday, August 27, 2009

Hidden Gems

One of the things I always teach in our Cisco ASA workshops is how to preview commands in the Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) before sending them to the appliance. It's easy and it's also a great way to familiarize yourself with the command-line interface (CLI). Here's how to do it: In the ASDM, click on Tools>>Preferences. On the General tab, in the Communications section, check the box to "Preview commands before sending them to the device".

Here's another handy learning tool for the Cisco ASA: You can run the ASDM in demo mode. You must first download the ASDM demo software from Cisco using your Cisco login. Make sure to download the appropriate demo version for the version of ASDM software you're running. For example, I recently downloaded and installed asdm-demo-621.msi. Once the demo software is installed, you can run it by starting the ASDM launcher and checking the box to "Run in demo mode". ASDM demo mode provides a great way to explore the ASDM and familiarize yourself with its extensive capabilities.