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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Cisco Meraki MX

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco ACI

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ACisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is network virtualization technology.N/A

    Cisco Meraki MX

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Meraki MX Firewalls is a combined UTM and Software-Defined WAN solution. Meraki is managed via the cloud, and provides core firewall services, including site-to-site VPN, plus network monitoring.

    $595

    per appliance

    Pricing
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    MX64
    $595
    per appliance
    MX67
    $695
    per appliance
    MX68
    $995
    per appliance
    MX84
    $1,995
    per appliance
    MX100
    $4,995
    per appliance
    MX250
    $9,995
    per appliance
    MX450
    $19,995
    per appliance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco ACI
    LAN, Storage network and compute were already Cisco so we moved from Nexus to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure as natural alignment and simplified the dc operations.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Meraki MX
    The enormous difference between Catalyst and Meraki products is the granular and simple deployment. The Cisco security appliance firewall gives one and you more granular activity whereas the Cisco Meraki MX is focused on plug and play and it gets one and you going. I like …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    113 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    171 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    96 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    160 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    115 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    167 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    145 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    93 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    164 Answers
    Features
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) and Cisco Meraki MX
    Feature
    Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Meraki MX
    7.8
    173 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings7.8167 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.4162 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings7.7158 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings7.7160 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.8132 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.7158 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings7.1166 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings8.6157 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings8.5158 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings7.5149 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings7.188 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    9.0
    (218 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.7
    (10 ratings)
    9.1
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    5.1
    (8 ratings)
    9.2
    (13 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.4
    (11 ratings)
    8.9
    (19 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.7
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.2
    (4 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (9 ratings)
    8.9
    (184 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    8.7
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (4 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco ACICisco Meraki MX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    The ACI solution is perfectly fit for a large or multi-site data center environment. It permits simplifying deployment, management, automation, and security. ACI is especially valuable when strong scalability, automation, security, and segmentation are required. However, ACI is less suitable for a small environment due to its complexity and high cost.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    The Meraki MX lineup is well suited for organizations that need centralized management of multiple locations, as it allows for both quick deployment and simple/easy remote administration all from a single pane of glass. It also works very well for providing VPN access for remote workers and helps monitor end-device uptime. It does, however, fall a bit short in its firewall's customization, compared to traditional appliances (like our WatchGuard Firebox), so perhaps less suited for organizations that need more customization, as the Meraki MX lineup is primarily designed for simplicity and straightforward cloud-based management.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • Cisco ACI, The object model is very complicated. It's something difficult to understand and also because there is a user interface, there's a web user interface, but it's not optimal to use it because if you want to deploy a large amount of VLAN or a large amount of tenants, it's quite difficult to do it or it's quite challenging. Maybe if you want to configure a large amount of ports using the web interface, it's not appropriate because it takes a lot of time. It also provides APIs to do that, but as I say, the object model is very difficult to understand and there is very little documentation about automation of the ACI and maybe there is but it's not so easy to find.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • The Cisco Meraki MX series is phenomenal at allowing us to remotely manage networks. So the devices usually act as the brain behind our client's networks, which makes it really, really easy for our team to take a look at what's going on in those client network environments, resolve any issues, and make sure that our client's networks are staying secure.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • I think something I've just went to a session with hyper fabric and the ideas that hyper fabric has. Keep it really simple because Cisco ACI is a complex system and adopt some of the ideas behind hyper fabric, bring it to ACI that will be really beneficial. So as I said, automation is a great thing, but it's still, you need to have the background and the really complex stuff that happens behind the scenes to leverage the value of that solution. And by adding more simplicity to it, I think that will be a great thing. And also integrating with other applications in terms of the automation.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • 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
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    Provided with the intensive fault isolation for the CISCO ACI, we are glad that we have this Data Center Solution in place and we will continue to renew as long as the future needed requirements are meet and more helpful features will be enabled in the future with the integration of security
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    The simplicity and ease of use for the Meraki Dashboard make it an easy choice for our organization to renew our Meraki Enterprise Agreement. We will likely continue using the Meraki MC67-C, MX450, and other MX models in their catalog until we shift away from Meraki completely
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Cisco
    You'll need a lot of training and hands on experience to get the most out of the product. There are a lot of very useful features in the ACI product. Often times there are a lot of ways to get to a solution for chalanges in the field. The solutions might be different eacht time. Knowing which one to implement is somtimes a challenge.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Some features simply aren't there, but the ones that are there are pretty easy to use. Sometimes it is easy to get lost when trying to find the specific device you want to work on, but that's mostly due to how rarely we have to go into the interface.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    It allways works. If there are problems with links going down by accident (say someone accidentally unpatches something they shouldn't have), we rarely miss more then one packet over the link. Also, using VPCs we are able to upgrade the software on the switches without the attached EPs ever noticing.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    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
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    Performance
    Cisco
    Day to day operations on Cisco ACI do not require much human intervention, the platform ticks over without any major faults. Being able to rapidly replicate the communication between two groups of machines across multiple sub networks speeds up new application delivery, and the integration into vmWare allows multiple teams within IT to work together to problem solve rapidly.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    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
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    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco provides users and partners with a multitude of data for you to consume. I think that the stuff in the public domain goes a long way to assisting you find any answers you may need, plus insights and information from areas such as DevNet provide you with access to more than just the traditional release notes and the like
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    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
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    The Cisco ACI training provided by Cisco was in depth, covered all of our requirements, and allowed us to implement and maintain the platform without issues.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    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
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    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    it was okay as it was moderated but still better than nothing and done via semi self paced webex meeting
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Being involved in the implmentation gives you more overview on how things are supposed to be working and communicating, you can easily performce troubleshooting and understanding the troubleshooting scenario
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    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.
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    Actually we start our learning in networking career with Cisco. So it is very useful or easier to learn this product. And honestly speaking, I didn't work in any other data center solution other than Cisco. So I cannot compare what it gives us more than other popular stuff. But this is very nice product like from Cisco.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Cisco CVO (MEVO) As previously mentioned we needed to manually configure each one which would take 15-20 minutes per device and needed to be done on-site. These devices can also go down more frequently after power outages and other incidents, and we've seen them not come back online. These devices are also much larger.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    Cisco ACI scales well and is suited in scenarios such as multi-cloud or large data centre implementations. It is not suited to smaller deployments as the efficiencies that it provides are not fully realised. It is well suited in large environments that contain both virtual and bare-metal machines allowing a great deal of flexibility. It is also perfect to support multi-tenancy platforms.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    We started only with the Main Meraki MX85 in our enterprise for our main hub, then we started adding remote sites with Meraki MX 68 and connected to our Main hub. Adding more sites and scaling the network is easy, and improving our connectivity saves time and cost to manage, or adding manpower with only 1 dashboard can manage all applications. Scaling and flexibility to change or expand our network are easy thanks to Meraki MX features
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • We've definitely spent quite a bit of time relearning how to do things in ACI, but I think the investment has been well worth while considering that we can now deploy tenants and leaves from the ground up in a matter of seconds.
    • We can if we choose to upgrade an entire datacenters worth of switches in a single night. (We've chosen to break it up for availability requirements, but if you didn't require 99.999% uptime like us you may be able to do it)
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • 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.
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