cisco's use of term " appliance"

[sarahr202]

Hi everybody.

I have read many in cisco documents the term " appliance"  such  as asa appliance, firewall appliance. 

What exactly it means when Cisco use this term " appliance " ?

thanks and have a great day.

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

There's not a fixed definition.

Historically the ASA was called an Adaptive Security Appliance. The appliance meaning it was one box that could be made to do many different functions (firewall, VPN headend, IPS, etc.)

More recently, appliance is used to refer to products that are based on a custom-built rack mounted computer. These typically run a Linux distribution (RHEL) and have Cisco's ADE-OS (Application Development Environment Operating System) on top of Linux running any of several applications. Examples include Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Cisco Prime LMS, Identity Services Engine, ACS, etc.

[sarahr202]

Thanks Marvin.

In that regard can cisco call manager 8 running on redhat linux be considered as appliance?

Likewise is Cisco unity connection running on redhat considered as appliance too ?

thanks

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

You're welcome.

Following Cisco's lead, they usually use the appliance term for a bundled product where they sell the physical server and software together. For call manager (technically Unified Communications Manager 8.0) the offer it as an appliance on a B- or C-series UCS server. I'd say if you bring your own server that you've moved away from the appliance (loose) definition.

See the data sheet for UCM here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps556/ps10662/data_sheet_c78-584298.html

In the "Platforms" section they distinguish between the "appliance" and non-appliance models.

[sarahr202]

thanks Marvin