I ordered 801-1205-5000 watchdog contract from a reseller, now what?

[jjbase]

Hello, roughly 24hrs ago I ordered a 801-1205-5000 5yrs watchdog support for my ZD1205 because I want to have software upgrades for my ZD and attached APs (4 r700 and upcoming 1 r720), being an home user/enthusiast with no business connections I literally bought it from the first google result reseller that looked legit, used Paypal and offered international orders (I’m in EU), namely “Barcode Discount” based in Chicago (parent company is Barcodes LLC that operates a number of similar sites).

Now while I wait for my (very pricey, for a home user) order to be honored, I’m growing puzzled about the whole process. Just puzzled for now. First of all, one would expect like a 5 minutes instant digital delivery, but apparently 2-3 days will be needed. (honestly Ruckus should just put a giant “buy premium support with Paypal” button in the ZD dashboard, why they don’t do it and force you thru sales channels is beyond me, but I digress). After an hour I called the reseller (thanks Skype for cheap overseas calls) to ask about the whole process and they said that in the coming days Ruckus themselves would honor the order via email. I find it weird, how so? I paid the reseller and never told them the S/N of my ZD. They have my email of course. And I’m from another world region.

Getting all this to work is also a prerequisite for buying my next R720 ap because otherwise my ZD1205 on an old software would not support it...

So, tldr, I dropped a lot of money on an order and I’m puzzled about the whole process, reseller CS said Ruckus will honor, if tomorrow none of the involved parties (the reseller or Ruckus) digitally delivers my watchdog activation code I will have to make some calls via Skype again...

[kj_liu]

Thanks jjbase for updating us. I called Ruckus directly and the nice tech/engineer (not sure what she was exactly) confirmed the right support contract for an end-user with a ZD1205 (ZD1200 + 5 licenses) was 801-1205-1000/3000/5000.

If you have more than five APs hooked up to the ZD1200, you'd have to buy additional support contracts for the extra ones if you want to get firmware to them.

I was then transferred to sales (I think?) who gave me a local reseller contact. I've been holding off on calling her or directly purchasing a contract online because the process seemed to take so long that I was starting to reevaluate whether firmware updates were all that important. The upselling by the online reseller was especially atrocious.

Now that I know there are in fact three stages of hell, I'm even more hesitant.

Good thing the product is so blindingly good (I'm coming from the previous generation equipment from a company starting with "U"), and that the tech support is also wonderful. It's just this support contract buyer's twilight zone that's weirdly convoluted that's turning me way off.

[monnat_systems]

KJ
example --- when controller licensed for 10 AP's is managing 10 AP's ... if you firmware upgrade the controller then 10 AP's will auto upgrade too.. this is a normal controller feature and ideally does not need any additional support/license on AP just for this. controller is anyway doing that..

lets say you got controller licensed for 10 AP's and you want to add two more AP's and buy two new AP's. Now you also need to buy controller license to support two additional AP.

[kj_liu]

That is pretty cool, and what I would have expected but I did not have actual hands-on experience to verify (I have only three R710s connected to my ZD1200 and its five included licenses).

The Ruckus rep I spoke to indicated that what you said was not the case, i.e. adding more APs above your license limit would require buying ZD licenses for each new AP (this part is obvious) but *also* that a support contract for each AP would be necessary to upgrade firmware on those APs.

At the time I thought that seemed reasonable given that the product number for, say, the ZD1200 support contract has a "5" in it, e.g. 801-1205-1000. It made sense that the support was only good to update firmware on up to five licensed APs.

So the fact that firmware updates flow to all (licensed) APs with any ZD support contract is good news indeed. Thanks very much for that real-world clarification!

[monnat_systems]

i would like to also add...buying support for AP is primarily for advance replacement of AP in a controller based environment...

[jjbase]

Easter has passed and I’m still waiting...I had a brief email contact with the local reseller last week “I confirm you that the order with Ruckus was placed and you will shortly receive instructions”...