We had a brief by our onsite Cisco Engineer (yes we spend so much money Cisco give us a pre/post sales guy to assist)
He was talking about the new 3560/3750-E series. while they look like an impressive product, the worrying thing that struck out was that he confirmed that the images for these devices will require an activation key. Moving away from the old system of download an image on and TFTP it on the switch.
These every switch has the full feature set but each stage is released using an activation key which is tied to individual serial number.
What he also did say was that people buying routers and swtiches from ebay beware, its actually illegal to transfer a software image even if its on a device. Officially if you buy a switch say from ebay you should delete the image, then the purchase the relevant key from Cisco.
The new Key activation software will use a 'Free' key management server provided by Cisco.
The logistics for work is going to be a nightmare! getting activation keys for all our switches across our 3000+ sites!
Also before a 6500 IOS image with certain feature sets would be a resonable size, now you will need the whole size image meaning you need the bigger flash....you can see where this is going
Also E seems to be the theme for the future all new annoucnments have E in them, like the sup 1440-E.
Anyway beware in the future, buying a Switch on ebay could mean you have a $500 paperweight until you purchase an activation key or a smartnet contract.
Dont panic to much its only the new hardware platforms and the 2800 series ISR that will be affected.
