We are predominantly a Cisco house for networking, so the risk raised by introducing the split switching was too high. We also found there are more Cisco engineers available than Aruba/HPE switching engineers. The lifetime warranty from HPE was a major factor in considering the …
Cisco Catalyst switches are a better and more consistent product. Published design guides, multivendor SFP support and configuration consistency with other Cisco products in fleet make them better for the org.
Cisco is still easy enough to configure, with options in both console as well as web to get set up and deploy. Experience is almost always the same, unless some commands have been updated or added to the OS, but it's still always consist which is great.
The equipments that we use to compare are very similar in a question of compatibility and speed. The Cisco Catalyst Switches was the standard for the years in the company and the robusts of the equipment brings the advantage to this family of products that we decided to use to …
We selected Cisco Catalyst Switches over the HPE Aruba switches due to the end-to-end solution that Cisco has been building and improving upon over the last 5+ years. We can now utilize the same security tagging and posturing from our access layer all the way up through our …
I believe Cisco is a market leader with a strong reputation for delivering reliable networking solutions. The Catalyst series is widely adopted in enterprise settings. Cisco also provides a global network of certified partners and offers comprehensive support and services, …
The Cisco Calalyst has a realiable solution over the concurrent. It has more integration and professionals trained to support and implement the solutions. Once we decided to Cisco our tech team was trained quickly. So we had to many positive impact to our business including the …
Cisco Catalyst Switches primarily stack up against these other brands by their feature-rich configuration, high bandwidth processing, customization, access control, and scalability. Some of the major reasons are the support for Cisco Catalyst Switches and how quick it is. …
The Catalyst line is far more feature rich than Aruba or Meraki. The main question will be if any of those additional features provide value to the organization. There are plenty of environments where the ease of use that Meraki has far outweighed the expanded feature set of …
Juniper is another great product in terms of quality. The pool of talent that knows Cisco is greater however which is an advantage for Cisco. I do like Juniper's ability to confirm the commit, allowing for rollback of configuration if there are issues. Both are good quality …
The HPE Aruba Switches are definitely easier to setup than Cisco Catalyst Switches. We prefer to have a managed interface, so the HPE Aruba Switches are a better option than most Netgear or D-Link switches. Compared to HPE Networking Switches, the Aruba models typically are …
HPE switches are much more cost-effective than Cisco and others with a much more gentle learning curve. Aruba switches can be implemented by users with very little networking experience.
Our access infrastructure. If you want to bring many devices into your infrastructure and you don't want to bring the devices direct on the core routers, something like that. Or to the routers, the catalyst switches are perfectly suited for that or for top of direct switches.
These devices are rock solid, you will se them up once and not have to mess with them for years. They are work horses that don't die. We use them in an office environment and have only ever had 1 fail due to a PSU issue, we got a replacement next day and it's been working great.
I think particularly for the 2960-Xs, these are quite sturdy. I believe they don't get, even if there's a power outage out at Cole's, we usually do some electricity work just to do the electricity redundancy. We just power off the, let's say, the transformers and then see if the mains can handle the power supply. So these 2960, these switches are quite sturdy, I believe, and they don't die on us, but I've seen with the 9200s and the other switches, they don't come back usually when there's a power outage or something like that. So we have to replace the power supply units and all those things to get them working again.
Wireless Access Points (APs) zero touch provisioning
Its high-end family (running the AOS-CX firmware) supports a virtualization technology called VSX (Virtual Switching Extension) which allows 2 switches to present itself as one virtualized switch under Layer 2, and as 2 separate routers under Layer 3; thereby providing high availability.
I wouldn't fault the product per se. I think it's just more its integration with the SSD access network that there could be room for improvement. I think the 9300 has been a solid device by itself, and I can't think of anything that I could fault on the device itself. It's probably been doing a very good job and we are happy with it.
I have had issues finding monitoring software that natively supports Provision/Aruba OS. Most are designed primarily with Cisco in mind.
HPE/Aruba switches have historically had issues with corrupt flash. This seems to be less common in more recent models.
HPE/Aruba's switching portfolio can be confusing. Some models run on the Aruba OS while some others run on Comware. There is some overlap in these model lines so at times is can be tough to tell which switch is right.
They are consistently reliable and this switch in particular is a very affordable solution. We can place the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches gear in areas that we normally would not place a switch because it is affordable enough to make it justifiable. And because it is a reliable solution, we are confident it will continue to provide service over the long haul.
Cisco by and far does a great job with the Catalyst line. From a layer 2 dumb switch all the way up to ISP carrier grade switching within the Catalyst portfolio. The best part about it is command parity among the various tiers of product. The only differences are going to lie in what features are available per switch.
I preferred the OS running on the 2530 series switches, but the ArubaOS is very usable. It's similar to the Cisco OS command line interface, but somehow more understandable. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the documentation is great and it makes sense after a while of using it.
No, the packets flow. Sometimes you will see collisions and broadcast storms can happen which will slow performance but that can be fixed and the packets will flow.
We rarely have issues with the product. I have only had to contact support one time since we put it in and that was to see if another vendor was giving me accurate information on an issue I was having.
HPE Support is very easy to reach. A knowledgable rep can be reached in a few minutes. After some basic troubleshooting if the failure is due to hardware I can receive a replacement within a day or even in a few hours.
Cisco Networking Academy partners with many local Colleges and High Schools to provide great hands-on training. You do need to drive to learn the topic. The in-class session only go so far. You really need to apply this to the real world. Cisco makes it easy for business to connect via CLC or Cisco Learning Credits.
The implementation of the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches is fairly seamless, especially if you are familiar with Cisco products. We have had Brocade switch gear in place too, and the differences between the manufacturers [are] not a major issue.
I use some Aruba switches as well and some Huawei products as well. That's the reference, honestly, that's really all the products that are quite good are mostly copying what Cisco does. And when it does not copy, it's not as good. The only other competitor that does the same kind of project, but differently in a good way is Juniper. For me it works quite as well, but that's the only vendor that I would say is really different from Cisco and in a good way. I mean both are good but not the same way.
We used to have a lot of Cisco switches which are great, but the support contracts and other expenses mount up quickly; one of the main reasons for switching to HP for networking was the cost, but the hardware and software have gotten so much better over the years.
I can’t see us changing network hardware unless the price increases dramatically.
We are exclusive Cisco at our organization. In truth part of the reason is, with one type of switch and one manufacturer, it is easier to support. It is also easier to give consistent training to our staff in our tech department
When comparing Aruba to Cisco and Dell there is no comparison in cost. Aruba is a better value and will not require additional licensing like it often the case with Cisco.
The Aruba OS is very simple to use and understand. A user with very little networking experience can understand the config of an Aruba switch.
Aruba's hardware warranty assures me that even my oldest switches are covered due to hardware failure.
In the 11 years I have worked with HPE/Aruba and with over 55 switches I have had a hardware failure less than a handful of times.
