Working on a medium sized office network which only has a single PoE switch for WAPs. About 200 users. No copper to the desk… It made sense to buy a second PoE switch to give a bit of redundancy, even if it’s for manually swapping cables in case switch A dies.
Plug in switch, wait for power up and decide to test the manual failover over lunch. Gateway plugged in, flashing lights. WAPs plugged in, flashing lights. Wireless network visible but can’t connect as there’s no DHCP. Swap everything back and we’re back in business.
The switch is unuseable until I’ve installed an app, created an account, onboarded to a “cloud” and configured from my phone.
Oh HP, how you have fallen from the rock-solid days of procurves and have degenerated to the unfortunately named Aruba “Always On”
Rant over.
But how will you manage your internal LAN from “the cloud” if your configuration isn’t created, stored and managed from “the cloud”? Surely, you aren’t some heathen who would rather not create the extra attack surface of having all that exposed to the internet? No, this is The Way. Cloudify ALL THE THINGS! No local configs. Trust “the cloud” to always be there. There has never been any example of service providers turning off cloud services and leaving users with expensive door stops. Nope, never. There is no Nest of products for which this had happened.
Sarcasm aside, never buy hardware which can’t be used without a proprietary cloud service. If you can’t turn those requirements off, then you don’t really own the device. You’re just renting it with a high, up-front activation fee and the requirement to handle disposal. Even worse, you get to go through all those costs again when the company decides you need to buy a new version.