Why vendor choice matters
Your team already knows a particular firewall or SD-WAN platform. Keeping it when moving to virtual infrastructure avoids retraining and lets you reuse policies.
Bring your own licence
Many vendors allow their virtual appliances to run on third-party infrastructure with your existing licences. Peer1ix Virtual Edge supports this model for supported images.
Questions to ask your vendor
- Is the licence portable to non-hyperscale virtual platforms?
- What throughput tiers are available, and what compute do they need?
- Can the instance be managed from our existing controller?
Sizing
Virtual appliance throughput depends on CPU, memory and features enabled. Encryption and inspection consume more resources. Start from vendor sizing guides and test.
Lifecycle
Track licence expiry, software versions and support contracts for every instance, just as you would for hardware.
