Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms deliver secure, high-performance SD-WAN built for hybrid work, multicloud access, and 5G-ready networks. Powered by Cisco IOS XE, these devices combine flexible routing, SASE integration, and cloud-native agility to support AI-driven networking and edge computing needs.
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HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform addresses the challenges associated with backhauling cloud-destined traffic to the data center, thereby reducing the cost of bandwidth connectivity from the data center to cloud providers.
With the flexibility of sizing options, the Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms has worked to deliver solutions for our various needs. Smaller systems offer strong connectivity for office developments. Mid-range options have served our larger campuses well. Our data center deployments of the larger systems have provided up to 100G connectivity and advanced routing solutions. The Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms continues to meet our needs and exceed our expectations.
Have remote sites and need them to feel local? Want to get all your locations virtually on the same network? This is the way. And if you're like us and need an easy way to manage all your remote locations in one place this is the tool you want to use.
Often there are alarms that are false positives due to bugs in the code - these are usually rectified in the next patch but that seems to be a common occurrence with updates
Can only have 7 "BIOs" - which are effectively policies that you use to choose how traffic is handled in terms of routing and QoS
Devices throughput is capped by Aruba licensing meaning that's an additional concern you'll have to monitor and take into consideration when choosing ISPs.
Alerts sometimes don't tell you things you'd like to know (like when a site is nearing its bandwidth cap)
Because I have had no issues with this product line and have grown go really trust in it. One of the besr thing is that this has had less vulnerabilities that the past cisco router that I have dealt with. In my line of work needing to upgrade code is always something that needs to be done after hours and most likely on weekends.
Either you deploy those routers as a standalone, or as part of the SD-WAN fabric, the amount of features and settings you can configure on them, is well beyond any other vendor or product on the market. While this may bring some configuration complexity, availability of support for variaty of different protocols and features allows you to solve almost any network challenge you may face
The product and its management as a whole are worth investigating for any kind of people interested in looking at new SD-WAN appliances. The devices possess a lot of capability for granularity which makes them much more advanced than other products I've worked with in the past. Ironically, for all the granularity though, this product is held back that you can ultimately only have 7 different policies for routing decisions. We've ran into instances where we wanted two sites to only share certain routes between each other (through the use of tags which are basically an arbitrary way to say this traffic is special) but then we had to collapse some of our routing decisions in order to make a specific route table for these two to be able which felt like a step back in the advanced routing decisions we had previously made
I have always had great response time and have never been let down by cisco support. I have had issues where the person who was assisting me was not able to provide a resolution but by utilizing his team members they where able to come together to provide a answer and resplve the situation.
Compared to the Cisco 2000 Series Connected GRID Routers, CGR2010, the Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms is more powerful in processing, and it has the capability to do the segment routing. It is easier to install physically and occupies less space in the rack, consumes less power, and saves more for the company.
Prisma SD-WAN is a very simple solution to configure and maintain (so much to the point that in that environment, I questioned if my skills as a Network Engineer were needed). However it worked almost primarily on its own with very little input, by default and at the time of review had no way to do fully mesh (which was desired), and constantly suffered from memory leak. Its integrations were through the use of obscure tags and suffered from a "when it works - it works but when it doesn't - it doesn't and you don't know why" mentality. In contrast, HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN gives you a lot of insight into what is going on with the site, the integrations are done easily within Orchestrator (the control plane), and ultimately the product is typically a very stable product with many ways to configure and tweak the solution to fit your business needs.
Positive: It has a lot of options for the licensing level based on the scenario (SDWAN, IPSEC, Routing). There is no need for the DNA license for all the throughout for routing mode, like ISR4K models
Negative: There is a gap between the 200Mbps tier licence and 1Gbps tier. If a custumer needs a 500Mbps licence (1G AGG), we need to offer a doubled value
Positive: The platform can be used for routing mode and can be migrated to SDWAN using the same hardware.
