Used Infoblox appliance - How does licensing/updates work?

[#1]

I'm thinking of buying a modern Infoblox Trinzic appliance (TE-805), used. This will be for home lab use. How does getting software updates work for used Infoblox devices? Will I be able to register it on the Infoblox support portal so I can at least get firmware updates for my appliance? Or will I be locked in to the firmware that's on the used device?

I should add I'm only interested in DDI functionality, but want to keep firmware up to date for both security and feature updates. 

[#2]

Hmm this is a good question, hardware appliances used to come with permanent licenses loaded already, so you could use a second hand one no problem, and if you have a support account at work you could get access to the NIOS images. If you don't already have an Infoblox support account then I'm not sure they have a "home lab" option so not sure how you will get access to newer versions unless there is an unofficial source somewhere (eg. if you search hard enough you might find a public ftp server hosting NIOS images, such as a university or college).

Now that Infoblox has switched to a subscription model you can't assume any second hand boxes you buy will have a permanent license loaded, you'll probably have to speak to the seller, maybe get them to send you the output from a "show license" command? If it does have a subscription license loaded already then it'll likely expire at some point, meaning the only way to renew it will be to purchase a new subscription license from Infoblox.

An alternative is to run it with temporary licenses, but that'll mean resetting it every 60 days - however there is a trick you can do if you can run it in a HA pair then you can reset it and get it to resync it's database from the passive node when you "rejoin" it to it's pair. (Later versions of NIOS support a VM HA partner so you could run the passive node in VMware). In the meantime the passive node will take over whilst you reset the active node. Or you could just backup and restore the database every 60 days.

I run Infoblox in my home lab here and use the HA trick to keep them all running on 60 day licenses, it's a pain having to reset them when the licenses expire but it doesn't take that long to do in the grand scheme of things.