On 10/18/2016 02:17 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dave, I've always worked on large corporate networks, as well as doing network security, so it's always been greatly complicated networks I've worked on.
Same here, though with different use cases. (ISPs and colo facilities)
Yes, I agree the device as a service is ridiculous. It makes general administration much easier, as for the licensing, every company I've worked for would usually have the maintenance or service contracts on their hardware while it was in use.
Yeah. That's a big luxury for when there's money to burn.
I don't like that once the contracts on the Cisco Meraki hardware expires that it ceases functioning. But in a production environment, having the contracts is part of the cost of running/maintaining the network. Since there is no "local" way to manage the hardware, the used hardware once they're taken off a production network, has significantly less value on the back end. But also helps to control 'loss/theft' of said hardware, since each device talks to and is managed centrally.
It also helps to control the secondary market, which Cisco despises with every fiber of their collective upper-management being. They'd love it if every device suddenly became a brick when the service contract expired, but a real production environment would never tolerate such crap, thank heaven. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA