CSS 11501 Question

[mpozorski]

I was reading through some documentation regarding the Cisco CSS 11501 and am a little confused and need some clarification.  We currently have a pair of CSS 11501 (CSS11501S-K9) running in active/standby mode for external load balancing.  Everything is working fine and there are no issues with them but I have been asked to review them (along with out other network equipment) to determine if they are in need of replacement/refresh.  I was looking on Cisco's website and it looks like these devices are scheduled to be end of life in November of 2011.  My confusion is that it looks like the replacement is the same thing but possibly a different version of code (CSS11501S-C-K9). I want to make sure that I know if I'm actually needing to replace the hardware in order to keep the devices supported as if I need to replace the hardware I need to begin an evaluation process to determine if there are other products/load balancing solutions that may better serve our needs.  I really don't want to replace them but if they are end of life I don't have a choice but if I need to I want to make sure that I replace them with the correct thing.  If anyone can let me know for sure if I need to replace the hardware/software I would appreciate it.

[litrenta]

The end of life pertains only to the CSS11501 that has the ssl harware that does not support compression (CSS11501S-K) no end of life had been announced for the css11501 with the newer ssl hardware. (CSS11501S-C-K9). Appropriate replacement is the latter model, or consider the ACE appliance (4710).

[mpozorski]

Thank you for the response.  It sounds like the hardware that we have (CSS11501S-C-K9) is affected by the EOL and that we need to replace it with either the CSS11501S-C-K9 or the ACE appliance (4710).  Either way not a real fun proposal, but I'll get something figured out.