Sanity Check -- about to buy SD-WAN (Versa) for 50 sites

We are about to buy a co-managed SD-WAN solution from CenturyLink which would use Versa's SD-WAN product. The hardware is an Intel C2558 based x86 box that Centurylink brands as its "medium" sized box. The large box is last gen Xeon D. Centurylink wants a pretty hefty monthly license fee for the boxes which includes the support and management cost.

The hardware isn't very impressive -- single PSU, last gen CPUs, etc.

A few questions:

1. Does anyone have Versa from Centurylink? How is performance? How is the service?
2. Can Versa be deployed as a VM or hardware install on other hardware? have you done this? It appears it does require Intel QuickAssist (which is on Xeon D and C3000 CPUs in the current gen).
3. Anything else I should know before I pull the trigger on this?