On 11 Aug 2016, at 13:39, Osborne, Bruce W (Network Services) wrote:
Perhaps you should consider Aruba Networks / HP Enterprise.
They eliminated "burned-in" licenses on controllers but if you replace
one of them, they will generate licenses for your replacement, at
least in our experience.
Regarding Cisco, this “issue” has been eliminated with the new
SmartLicense system, which makes licenses not tied to the physical
hardware, meaning you can use the licenses on 8540’s, 5520’s, and on
whatever new WLC’s that show up in the future. They also recently had
a campaign where you could do trade-in/upgrade from existing licenses
(e.g. from WiSM2’s or 5508’s) to the new SmartLicense system (the
only “downside” with this is that the SmartLicense for AP’s are
only eligible on SmartLicense enabled hardware, so if you upgrade, you
couldn’t technically use them on the WiSM2’s anymore, since they are
not SmartLicense compliant).
We do not purchase support on most of our APs since they have a
lifetime warranty anyway. For some unusual or mission-critical
applications (point-to-point for instance) we purchase the hardware
support to get quicker replacements. We *do* pay support the licenses
(AP & other) on our controllers but central licensing helps us
maximize the value of our licenses.
This is also the case for Cisco AP’s. Last few years we’ve bought
them without support, and utilize the limited lifetime warranty if we
need to replace broken AP’s (the only downside being that the
“lifetime warranty” replacement usually takes longer time than
normal RMA’s -- but this is easily solved by having a small pool of
AP’s acting as a “buffer” until you receive the replacement).
--
Joachim
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