Some time back I posted an article regarding the use of ASDM Demo Mode. To briefly summarize, I highlighted two main advantages to its use:

1. Being able to explore the features of the ASA GUI without involving a real “live” production appliance — and —
2. Helping the student prepare for a certification exam by practicing the interface.

As is frequently the case these days, a student of mine this past summer pointed out a valuable feature of this demo mode worth sharing, which is the subject of this post.

To recap a previous post, installation of ASDM Demo mode requires the download of the .msi file from the Cisco Software Center with “demo” in the file name. Once I did this, I encountered a “snag” with trying to have multiple versions “coexist”. Somewhere between ASDM Demo versions 6.2 and 6.3, the software execution changed to the point that I was not able to incrementally install new versions without “wiping out” the old. The solution to this was as simple as merely maintaining the folders contained in the path C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\ASDM\demo; these are labeled as shown in this screenshot:

Within these folders are subfolders containing the individual configuration scenario templates worth examining; for my test implementation I chose SSL_VPN_IPSec, which is the bottom-most folder shown below:

The final “folder” screenshot shows the area of interest, a file with the name config. What I needed to do to make this work was to do a “cut and paste” of an ASA configuration into NotePad and then save the result. Special care needs to be taken to ensure that Windows Explorer does NOT see this file as a Text File (i.e. it should truly be a file named “config” vs “config.txt”)!

If special care was taken to observe the preceding procedure, a working ASDM representation of your configuration should result:

The above screenshot is just a small fraction of what was imported into ASDM; other photos could have been taken of access-lists, object-groups, and other configuration elements, all of which were understood by the ASDM demo software. Not only can this “configuration replacement” be done but also new folders can be created with your own naming conventions. These will appear as additional choices in the ASDM Demo launch screen. The possibilities here should be encouraging to anyone wishing to examine the ASDM GUI representation of their configuration(s) offline.

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