Bradly, Was the email sent to you from Cisco, or a Cisco distributor? The disclaimer about non-Cisco memory is still intact: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/770/10.html If you call Cisco TAC and ask for the Approved Vendor List (AVL) for a particular product, the TAC engineer will provide you with part numbers and vendor info that's pulled from the same list that Cisco uses internally when purchasing memory. The list is updated regularly, so a particular memory product and/or vendor that was approved in January may no longer be on the approved list today. Memory product vendors change their products over time, so a memory product may become 'disqualified' on Cisco's list simply because it's no longer available (to Cisco) from the vendor, although it may be available from one of the manufacturer's distributors, until they clear out old stock. In most cases, the vendor has replaced it with an updated product, and the updated product will eventually be tested by Cisco and added to the AVL. In other cases, Cisco may have uncovered a problem with a particular vendor's memory product, so the product becomes disqualified. In these cases, if the problem is critical, Cisco would probably recall the memory (RMA). So, unless Cisco is concerned about having 'stale AVL information' remaining in a customer's hands, I can't see any reason why this process would stop. -rb

From: "Walters" <bwalters@inet-direct.com> Reply-To: <bwalters@inet-direct.com> To: <nanog@merit.edu> Subject: Changed Cisco Memory Policy?? Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 06:16:22 -0500

Has anybody else received one of these emails? I don't have an issue related to this, but I am concerned that this will drive up the costs of maintaining and improving my infrastructure.

-bradly

...

Going forward, Cisco no longer recommends the use in our networking products of memory products sold by third parties. Cisco has therefore discontinued the "Approved Vendor List" we have maintained in the past. In the event your company contacts Cisco with a support issue, and Cisco determines that the support issue you have reported is one that arises from your company's use of a third party memory product, Cisco may, in its discretion, refuse to provide technical assistance to help resolve the issue you have identified, whether such assistance would be provided under a product warranty or under a support plan such as SmartNet.

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