Cisco Clean Access and NAC There is a growing trend amongst vendors to buy a cheap HP or Dell server, paint it, put on a new plastic faceplate, and call it an "appliance" then sell it at double the normal cost. This is annoying to us here at Ponderosa because we try buy reliable, (and expensive) standard servers. We are a phone company and down time is NOT an option, so an el cheapo "appliance" is not OK. There is no legitimate to avoid the licensing requirements and cash outflow for these overpriced appliances. However, after paying for the license, SPEAKING HYPOTHETICALLY (hi Cisco) it may be possible to virtualize many of these "appliances" so you can run them on the servers you know and love. I have seen CAM and CAS running virtualized, at least for training. Naturally, if you were to pursue this, you would not want to violate licensing restrictions as to number of CPUs or instances you run; that would be plain old theft and wrong. Having said that, why not run this stuff on good hardware? I know the vendors say, "we can't guarantee this will work on your hardware." That argument kind of loses credibility when I see my high priced "appliance" is a POS Dell with noisy fans, or a low end HP with an Intel NIC stuck in it; and it REALLY loses credibility when it ships with a Broadcom NIC that needs a firmware update and tech support tells me to FTP the patch onto the server with the dysfunctional NIC. Umm, guys....Hello?
Daniel Sichel, CCNP, MCSE,MCSA,MCTS (Windows 2008) Network Engineer Ponderosa Telephone (559) 868-6367
