Licensing Issues
You do not need a license to run FWSM in single firewall mode. If you use the following command to convert FWSM to multiple mode, you can use two contexts in addition to an admin context:
FWSM# configure terminal
FWSM(config)# mode multiple
FWSM(config)# show mode
Firewall mode: multiple
The flash mode is the SAME as the running mode.
FWSM(config)#
Every context is mapped to a virtual firewall. If you require more than two virtual firewalls (contexts), you will need an activation key. Activation keys can be obtained from licensing@cisco.com, once you purchase the license. For security contexts, you can purchase up to 100 licenses in increments of 20.
The activation key comes in number form with four octets that can be entered into the FWSM with the activation-key key command as follows:
FWSM(config)# activation-key 0xaaaaaaaa 0xbbbbbbbb 0xcccccccc 0xdddddddd
FWSM(config)#
Then you can verify the number of contexts available with the show version command or the show activation-key command as follows:
FWSM(config)# show activation-key
Running Activation Key: 0xaaaaaaaa 0xbbbbbbbb 0xcccccccc 0xdddddddd