@Jerrod Howard
"what size AP deployments are you looking for? VMC will be for very small AP deployments (think less than 32 and possibly less than 16 APs)." --> we do from 20-30 APs to some like 500-600 APs. We operate in SMB, upper-level small up to upper-level midsize, from time to time in lower-level enterprise.
"Most VM admins won't be fans of standing up resources that lock out resources and don't make them available to other idle machines when they need it." --> most of our customers are with 1-2 admin guys. They are looking to lower number of boxes, not to increase. That's why they love Aerohive for example. We are not in USA and I actually came accross companies like Aruba which doesn't understand other markets. In other markets things are a lot smaller then in USA. For example we didn't even considered Aruba before HPE purchase since Aruba is (my understanding and info):
1. Focused on US enterprises
2. More expensive then Cisco (compared some quotes today I received from Aruba distributor)
3. Totally unknow brand in our country (even small one) but learned that region is also unaware of Aruba as networking brand.
"The power draw for an x86 based controller like the 7010 or 7008 are well below that of a VM in most cases (when the VM is sized appropriately), and note that for VMC, it requires hardware resource reservations (3 CPUs, 16GB RAM, 10-60GB disk)." --> still I do prefer VMC and my customers prefer VMs. Recently they started deploying Fortinet Fortigates as VMs and killing appliances. There are pro's anc con's for each way.
"What is different between Aruba controllers versus others like Cisco, Ruckus, Aerohive, etc is that "Aruba Controllers" terminate the AP connections and handle ALL the encryption/decryption." --> I'll check on this but I am pretty sure Fortinet has encryption between, even Aerohive once you deploy VM localy. But I will check this even do it is not much of concers with this since we are not working with NATO ;-).
"if you are looking for small deployments and you DON'T require high security crypto or government certs, you would use Aruba Instant which wouldn't need anything in your DC" --> nice, I have to learn exact differences between Instant and controller-based in order to be able to communicate with customers. Can you share some kind of documents where this is described? Tnx.
"So there will not ever be (at this point in time) any way to easily clone VMCs without re-serializing and re-licensing the platform." --> looks like we are talking about different things. It is just more convinient to have VM (as far as I am concerned) then appliance. Nobody is looking for a way to actually pirate controller and resell it as pirated copy. As far as regulations, I am not up to speed but if other US vendors are doing it and I assume same set of rules and laws apply to them as well, I see no problem.
"think of it as a form of DRM" --> there is way to solve this probably since other vendors are doing it.
"I'm curious what licensing difficulties you had with CPPM" --> As I said, I am new to Aruba and I ran accross document which is doing some sort of explanation how to do guest licensing, onboard, onguard, etc etc :-)))). I asked distributor for quote and they were confused what to offer :-)))). But they will come around. If you have good document to understand differences and learn how to calculate, be my guest :-)
ClearPass is really good. Rest of the stuff, we shall see :-).