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