One other advantage of support is advance replacement - if the controller dies, you get a replacement next business day. That’s important if you have only one controller. With zone directors, if the controller fails, the wireless network stays down until the controller is replaced. If you have support, you’ll have the new controller NBD. Without support, you have to mail the controller to Ruckus and you’ll receive the replacement in 2-3 weeks. If you can’t live with a potential outage of 2-3 weeks, you should consider buying support.
The current cost of end user support for a ZD1205 is $219 for 1 year, $470 for 3 years. Those prices are good until the end of the year.
An alternative to buying support is to buy a second controller on eBay. Prices vary but generally are $100-200. You should be able to change the firmware to match your version and then join the controllers together as a Smart Redundancy pair. If the active controller dies, the standby keeps the network up during the 2-3 weeks it takes Ruckus to send the replacement. Or you could just put the second controller on the shelf. If your controller fails, then replace it with the spare. If the firmware levels are different it won’t matter as long as the spare controller is 10.3 or lower.
