Cisco Meraki MX vs. HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN

We used Meraki MX with our remote sites and connected the MX 68 to our main MX 85. We routed traffic to our enterprise network and shared application and internet access to remote sites. We have routed traffic and allow only trusted IP address sources using the firewall rules implemented in the Meraki MX. In other scenarios, if the internet is lost, the Meraki will go offline; thus, stable internet access is important to maintain connectivity

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• It provides a really good single pane of glass so you can really easily identify end to end, what is going on in your environment.
• It provides the ability for someone that doesn't necessarily need a really deep level of knowledge to be able to operate and maintain it. I think that's probably a big selling point, but I think definitely for the people that I'm selling the products who just having a dashboard and being able to log onto it and see if things are good or bad is quite key. So it does that really well.

Incentivized

• The software and web interface is nicely designed
• Fewer bugs than some other competing services

Incentivized

• Layer seven firewall rules. Just making them more granular. We've been in meetings with Cisco SES where I've said feature requests many times and that's one of the big ones where it's just a little cumbersome to implement layer seven rules right now.
• Just making them more granular. We've been in meetings with Cisco SES where I've said feature requests many times and that's one of the big ones where it's just a little cumbersome to implement layer seven rules right now.

Incentivized

• There are a lot of menus for items to hide under
• 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)

Incentivized

It is already in place and the client is happy with it. We don't see a need to change what is already working. We want the Meraki to stay out of the way and keep things operating, and that's what it does.

Incentivized

The Cisco Meraki MX series is very easy to use. Setting up user VPN access, site to site VPN to tie multiple locations together and managing all your devices. You can even download the latest firmware and install without ever leaving the dashboard. Meraki is the very definition of easy to use

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Meraki MX devices support high availability (HA) configurations, which ensures minimal downtime if one device goes offline. This feature has helped us maintain a stable and reliable network, even in cases of hardware failures. ince Meraki is cloud-managed, we've noticed that the cloud infrastructure is generally highly reliable, with minimal service interruptions or downtime. This makes it easier to manage the network remotely without significant availability concerns. Meraki automatically pushes firmware updates and patches, which helps maintain system stability without requiring manual intervention. These updates are rolled out in a manner that ensures minimal disruption to service.

Incentivized

The interface is pretty responsive. The lower end devices are easy to overwhelm if you have a lot of throughput. Be sure the model you get is rated for the amount of traffic you will have. Overbuild if possible, otherwise you won't be fully leveraging the connection from your ISP.

Incentivized

I haven't ever had a bad experience with Meraki support. On the few occasions where I wasn't understanding the UI or needed some clarification about what a setting actually would do, I contacted them and they were very quickly able to provide help. Returns are simple and fast, too. We had to return a defective device one time and they shipped the replacement before we had even un-racked the one that was faulty. Unlike many other vendors, they didn't ask use to a do long list of scripted diagnostics, they just took my word for it that the device was broken and sent out a replacement immediately

Incentivized

great when they offered it, really tested your knowledge with hands on and see what your peers from other orgs know. glad to see that we were ahead of the curve of what our peers knew

Incentivized

it was okay as it was moderated but still better than nothing and done via semi self paced webex meeting

Incentivized

Implementing Meraki MX devices in phases—starting with a pilot group or select branch offices—was invaluable. This allowed us to identify potential configuration issues, troubleshoot problems, and refine our setup before rolling it out company-wide. It also helped to get feedback from early users and adjust the deployment strategy accordingly. The SD-WAN capabilities in Meraki MX were essential for optimizing our WAN traffic and ensuring better application performance across various locations.

Incentivized

We previously evaluated WatchGuard Firebox Cloud, but we needed a solution that was a bit more straightforward to deploy and manage. The MX met that need for us. However licensing costs for both solutions are still a bit high.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

When I first started with my company we had various infrastructure and a mix of tech. Since going to Cisco Meraki MX we have noticed better network performance and our new sites are much easier to bring online. Users have noticed an improvement in VPN connection and getting into all our systems.

Incentivized

• From a positive impact? Basically it allows us to set up shop very quickly. It allowed us to add sites to our network very quickly. From a negative perspective, I think the only thing is that I can see from a negative perspective is I have a preference to working with ACLI in terms of how I engage with the youth tool At the moment, the only way to actually engage with a tool is on a gui and sometimes what I'd actually like is more detailed information in terms of actual configuration that you'll actually get out of ACLI.

Incentivized

• ROI is still to be determined as you have to calculate the existing hardware costs
• Theoretically you could be saving lots of time managing all the hardware in between sites
• SDWAN is still new and may take an entirely new budget to accomplish

Incentivized