eBay purchase/Home lab

cafevoodoo

I'm setting a home lab to test out different things on live, non-production hardware. I also want to use it to go ahead and take the certs.

The cheapest route I have found is eBay. I believe the proper process would be to open a support ticket with picture of the device's serial number, and ask for it to be transferred. I set up a new account for this purpose. Does that sound correct? The device I have purchased thus far has an active subscription through November (supposedly).

Does anyone else have a home lab and/or use a WG device for home use? Any cost savings tips to share?

james.carson

eBay devices are often retired/traded up devices. If the device has been traded up (as part of the trade-up or red for red programs) you can no longer activate/apply license keys to that device.

I would suggest checking the serial number of the device against this tool to verify it's something that you can use:
https://www.watchguard.com/snlookup/snlookup.aspx

-HA (or high availability) devices are meant to be paired with another device of the same model for a cluster. These can't be activated as stand-alone units.

-NFR (or not for resale) devices are intended for use by WatchGuard partners for demonstrations, training, etc. They can't be activated by non-partner accounts. If you are a WatchGuard partner, I would suggest reaching out to your sales rep and inquiring about an NFR appliance, as this is what they're intended for.

We run the same firmware (FireWare) between all of our devices, so a configuration from the smallest device to our largest device are portable between each other.

The most capable small device for "home labs" (in my opinion) is the T40, which will run the Access Portal and Intelligent Anti-Virus features. The only feature it lacks is DLP, which isn't available on any of our current generation product line and is being phased out.