I am considering moving from Cisco to Juniper and would appreciate some basic advice. Main reason is cost and the fact that Cisco now make you use on-line licensing which is diabolical for a core or TOR switch, so the switch has to connect to the mother ship or a local VM replicating that functionality with then connects to Cisco.
I have a number of questions which I'd be grateful for answers for.
Firstly, do I need a support contract on a device to access updates for it ? I'm considering buying some second hand kit to play with but I don't want to be stuck on an old version of firmware.
Secondly, when deploying a new switch, how is licensing managed ? On Cisco layer 3 functionality is a different part number or now a different add-on licence. I don't mind that providing the license, once applied, stays applied for life and doesn't need...