Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms vs. VMware SD-WAN

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.

Incentivized

VMware SD WAN is a great solution for tying multiple locations together that are not physically located close. The link aggregation used in the technology allows for quicker failover to redundant connections, which makes the surface traffic seem to be uninterrupted. If planning to connect multiple locations while utilizing the existing internet, Veloclouds SDWAN provides stable and accurate aggregation of connections that provide a good sense of stability for the price.

Incentivized

• More resources for tunneling
• Ability to use sdwan softwre
• More memory for tcam tables
• Ability to utilize T1 lines for PRI
• Ability to act as a SBC for VoIP communication
• Rfid usage

Incentivized

• VeloCloud is excellent at automatically choosing the best internet connection based on speed and quality.
• It provides a web based interface allows all our connections to be managed from anywhere in the world.
• Because VMware has a strong history in networking and is a name I can trust, we are able to confidently invest in their technology.

Incentivized

• Adding more NIM slots on motherboard
• Adding PVDM slot for use cases where the router is used only for trans coding
• Adding more granular tiers for DNA licensing. For example it is a big gap between 2000Mbps (400 Mbps agg) and 1Gbps (2 Gbps Agg)

Incentivized

• VMware SD-WAN could provide cli access for troubleshooting
• VMware SD-WAN boxes could have more ports
• VMware SD-WAN box could have more applications to provide more health and visibility of the traffic passing through

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

VMware SD-WAN has great usability. We have had a positive experience with the solution. It has helped solved a number of issues with our network such as visibility in user usage, application usage, and prioritizing critical application network traffic. VMware SD-WAN user interface is also very easy to understand and configure.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

There are still some glitches that need to be worked out. As an example, I rebooted a device at one of our branch locations and it just died. That should never have happened, and I've only seen this happen when a company needs to improve hardware on some of their lower-end models.

Incentivized

the licensing is messy

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

At the time we made our decision to move forward with VeloCloud, Cisco Viptela and Cisco Meraki were the two players we compared against. Cisco's offerings were very customizable when using Viptela, but there was a big learning curve to implement. Meraki at the time was a lot simpler, but we needed the ability to customize some features in order to implement SD-WAN in our environment. VeloCloud was the perfect solution during our POC as it satisfied our needs.

Incentivized

• Improving the performance and the availability, it has increased the SLA we can ensure to the customers and so the sales has increased
• The initial expense is really high so the breakeven point is not so near
• The opex for licensing is high too

Incentivized

• Eliminate the cost of an MPLS circuit.
• Ease of deployment: the amount of time saved when adding additional sites to the solution, especially when you have a profile already built and when you add a new VC you just associate that profile with that appliance. Again, in a matter of minutes, you can have a new site up and running.
• Since there is not true firewall built-in, you would have to either purchase a third-party firewall or the virtual firewall that is supported by Velocloud.

Incentivized