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Juniper EX Series Switches

Score9.5 out of 10

32 Reviews and Ratings

What is Juniper EX Series Switches?

Juniper Networks offers the EX Series Ethernet switches, as cloud-grade switches designed for the converged enterprise branch, campus, and data center, and for service providers. They address growing enterprise demands for high availability, unified communications, and virtualization.

Categories & Use Cases

Juniper EX Series Switches

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Juniper EX Series Switches for all switching needs. We use it for access layer switching, core network, and top of rack in the server room. We leverage PoE and MGig for access layer. We use fiber SFPs on the core. We have moved away from every desk having a hard line in exchange for a denser Wi-Fi coverage. The combined use of Juniper Wi-Fi and Juniper switching grants a whole lot of power to the Mist portal.

Pros

  • Switch Administration in Mist
  • Virtual Stacks
  • Config management

Cons

  • Config parity in CLI and Mist
  • Loud fan noise, especially at startup.
  • Better integration with ServiceNow

Return on Investment

  • Price of Juniper for the performance is much better than the other leading vendor.
  • I have had minimal problems which frees me to focus on other areas.
  • Mist is intuitive and comes with free training. My Junior network admins were able to get up to speed quickly.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Catalyst Switches and Arista Campus Switches

Other Software Used

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Infoblox DDI (BloxOne), HPE Juniper Access Points

Juniper EX switches - connectivity the way it should be.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Juniper EX switches are used to all access switching needs and connectivity between campuses. The product addresses our needs for an easy to manage networking platform. Various models from the portfolio are used in order to meet the needs of different buildings and projects.

We use them in conjunction with MIST the platform for management and assurance of the network.

Pros

  • Switching and routing
  • Redudancy
  • Configuration resiliency
  • Software maturity

Cons

  • Better storage management for logs
  • More fanless options

Return on Investment

  • Less time spent managing configuraitions
  • More uptime

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points, Cisco Meraki MS, Ubiquiti Networks UniFi and HPE Aruba Networking Switches

Juniper EX as an alternative for Cisco Catalyst

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Juniper EX as access switches. In the past we used Cisco catalyst and HP but we needed a unique solution with carrier class grade without spend a lot of money. Juniper EX introduced also L3 features and Virtual Chassis solve multiple IPs that we need to manage

Pros

  • Stack - Virtual chassis
  • Commit feature
  • Strong OS

Cons

  • Upgrading OS requires 10-12 mins of downtime
  • OS boot is slow (around 7mins)
  • Switch off/on requires a commit

Return on Investment

  • Bought EX2200 in 2016 and we dismissed them after 8 years without issue to new models (just replacing switch)
  • They are bigger than other brands like HPe so we replaced some racks

Usability

Alternatives Considered

HPE Aruba Ethernet Switches and Cisco Catalyst Switches

Other Software Used

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance, Zabbix, Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points

Juniper EX Series Switches: Best Overall for my USE

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our Juniper EX Series 2300 Switches are used at each of our locations. The Juniper EX Series Switches are used at Access switches and use L2/L3 switching. We utilize the MIST Dashboard for quick implementation via switch templates and port configurations from the cloud dashboard. We also utilize the virtual chassis functionality at some locations.

Pros

  • Deployment
  • Customer Service
  • Price

Cons

  • Inventory
  • Features
  • Faster Cloud Configuration

Most Important Features

  • MIST Dashboard
  • Global Configurations
  • Suppport

Return on Investment

  • Increased Productivity
  • Decreased Downtime
  • Added Visiblity

Alternatives Considered

NETGEAR Ethernet Switches

Other Software Used

Camtasia, Splashtop, mRemoteNG

Usability

Juniper EX Series switches in a diverse environment

Pros

  • JunOS command line is easy to use.
  • Show and commit commands allow for more certainty when configuring switches.

Cons

  • J-Web web UI is not as easy to navigate as the JunOS command line.
  • Interface identifiers (GE-0/0/0, GE-0/1/0, GE-0/2/0) with ports/modules can be inconsistent from front to the back of switches.

Return on Investment

  • The Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches have provided a life span beyond what our replacement cycle allots, which allows us to have more time to budget for replacements.
  • The initial purchase price is very competitive with other enterprise network switching companies.

Alternatives Considered

HPE Aruba Ethernet Switches, Extreme Ethernet Switches and Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch

Other Software Used

FleetFocus, Aruba ClearPass, SolarWinds IP Address Manager