Contracts that allow upgrade of IOS?

Hi Andrew,

You may wish to investigate the Cisco SMARTnet Pricing Calculator:

Brad Reese BradReese.Com Cisco Repair Service Experts

Andrew,

Make sure you have the right Category for your equipment. If your Category is not correct you will not be able to register it.

Sincerely,

Brad Reese Factory Refurbished Cisco

It doesn't help me in determining whether I can upgrade the IOS on that though. The equipment is an 837 router, and the person knew I was going for that with that equipment.

Thanks. Andrew.

You may find Cisco TAC Contacts Worldwide helpful:

Brad Reese

Googlegroups must die.

All the Smartnet contracts allow you to get software upgrades.

Not quite: the SAS-* series of contracts only allows software

-updates- (i.e,, within the same OS version) [and has no hardware support.] The SAU-* series is software updates and software upgrades (i.e., to new OS versions) [and has no hardware support either.]

All of the CON-* series contracts include software upgrades, as does the series that is for ISPs and telecomms providers but whose abbreviation I do not recall at the moment.

Okay, but I did get the first 2 letters correct!

Personally I believe the 24x7x4 is overkill. This offers you HARDWARE support as well as software. And not only does it give you just any hardware support, but immediate replacement (within 4 hours). This is basically one step below their best support avaialble (24x7x2 - 2 hour hardware replacement). I'd go a few tiers lower to get something that either includes minimal hardware support, or no hardware support at all and simply IOS updates/upgrades as you mentioned.

The other posts are correct and I generally recommend to get the one that allows updates as well as upgrades. You don't want to be stuck running a 4 year old IOS down the road in my opinion.

~Ryan

If I recall correctly, there is a level above CON-S2P (24x7x2) that involves co-location of spare parts at your site. It is not in the CON-* series of contract names, IIRC.

I looked at the CON-SAS and CON-SAU pricing a bit; for the items I looked at, the price difference against the 8x5xNBD (which includes hardware support) was smaller than the variation in 8x5xNBD pricing from different vendors. To phrase that a different way: 8x5xNBD from a Gold Support VAR with high volume discount is less expensive than a software-only contract from a Silver Support vendor.

Thus, I would not recommend that anyone even think about going software-only unless Cisco refuses to support them at the hardware level, or unless they are part of a big organization that already knows where to find maximum discount -and- which has an aggressive policy of purchasing internal hardware spares instead of purchasing hardware support.