Thanks everybody. I thought about the cost of the replacement unit and the inconvenience of possibly dealing with a new unit when I was on vacation or something and it's kind of a no-brainer. Firewalls today are less expensive than a server, and I have no problem replacing them when they are a few years old just to feel confident that they're young and vital enough to get through the day without a failing nic or PSU or Hard Drive.
I did budget it for the end of the year rather than the beginning though. Then I can keep the old config file and firewall handy in case of an emergency. Bill From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:35 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: firewall lifespan As a Watchguard Reseller, the only failure I've experienced in the last two years (Since the release of the e-series when we became partners) was with a 4 year old Core that had a failure that was possibly related to a power failure. We had the replacement unit N.B.D. (We're a SMB consultant firm, so our clients can get away with downtime or being covered by cheep Linksys firewall for 20 hours...) From: Steve Burkett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 12:41 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: firewall lifespan Be aware that Watchguard stopped selling the X500 in October 2006, and are End of Life'ing it in October 2009. See URL: http://www.watchguard.com/products/endoflife.asp Think your best bet would be to troll ebay for a spare, but we've still got a Firebox III X700 running at one of our sites 24-7 from 2002, so your X500 still has a few years left in it hopefully. In fact of the 40 or so units we have (variety of SOHO, Edge, X Core and X Core e-series), I can't think of us having a single hardware failure in the last 3-4 years. From: Bill Songstad (WCUL) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 08 October 2008 20:03 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: firewall lifespan I have a perfectly functional firewall. A pretty red Watchguard X 500 Core. I've been running it 24-7 for 4 years now. I've been through a lot of hardware on my servers in that time. So I'm wondering is this thing looking at collecting social security or is it just going to be young and vital for as long as Watchguard supports it? I don't want lose my internet Access for 2 days while I wait for a replacement if it up and dies on me. Do firewall appliances like these have a predictable lifespan? Thanks for any insight, Bill === STEMCOR CONFIDENTIALITY AND DISCLAIMER NOTICE This e-mail is intended only for the addressees named in it. The contents should not be disclosed to any other person nor copies taken. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the sender and do not necessarily represent those of Stemcor unless otherwise specifically stated. Stemcor does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message nor responsibility for any change made to it after it was sent by the original sender. You are advised to carry out a virus check before opening any attachment as Stemcor does not accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of any software viruses. You should be aware that Stemcor reserves the right to read incoming and outgoing emails. === ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
