@grimsby99 I would agree in most with previous reply, the biggest difference are the costs. If you already have some server or SoC board compatible with OS where omada runs, then you can save money and do not need to buy controller. If you do not have any device and you do want quickly setup, then omada controller is quite cheap and has industrial case. Since global changes on markets and chip shortages SoC boards like raspberry pi and similar got a lot more expensive, the cheapest board with 2G ram would cost you around the same price as controller, but you will have to get a case, to build it together, install and maintenance soft and so on... . Therefore, I guess if you do not have any SoC board around, it is better choice to buy controller than to use old pc or notebook, as those require much more power and power prices go sky high too and become more important.

Major point is that you always can try omada even on your pc to see if you do need it at all and if you need one, then order a controller.

SoC boards are great if you do require something which omada does not offer, like wireguard server or dynamic dns, samba, ... . Controller is restricted by the sofware preinstalled, that would be major con if comparing oc controller with lets say raspberry pi4. Beside that, ddr4, much faster cpu, more interfaces let's you use it more smoothly, there is also enough storage for backups and sync/backup and much more can be done independently from given or not given features of omada.

Hi  @btx & @Philbert, thank you for confirming the difference of the two.

I already have some sites with the OC200 installed.

Just got one other question, if I install the Software controller, would I be able to connect the AP's from different sites on to the Software controller? My though was to install this in one of our Azure servers and then have all the AP's connected to this server. Or I would still need to have a server on each site?

As all sites would have different IP subnets/prefixes.

Hope this makes sense, and hope some one could clarify this for me.

  @grimsby99 yes, this should work and you can manage multiple sites.

Thanks  @btx, I guess the only way I can confirm is test it. Will keep you posted.