I would personally always recommend Meraki over the above for ease of deployment and management. My only reservation is you feel like you never really own the equipment... its more like you're leasing it and that the end it all just stops working. Where with the above products, …
We looked at HPE Aruba wireless. However, we liked the dashboard and all-in-one insight for [Cisco] Meraki [MR] better. The Cisco brand name also made us feel better about a long-term commitment to the product and any support issues we may run into, knowing that Cisco has been …
The Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points is a good solution although not for everyone. Cost wise it is more expensive than competition. Technically speaking, if you are going for a full Cisco Meraki solution from firewall, switches, WAP, and management app, it requires a solid technical understanding of where each part and piece falls. If you have the money and the technical capabilities (in house or outsourced) then it is a solid platform that leans on Cisco's respectable history in the communications and infrastructure industry.
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.
It's cloud based, so as long as we have an internet connection, we can access it. Whenever we push a change, it's one stop like a single pane of glass to manage all our equipment. And so that's what I liked about it.
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.
So the Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points dashboard, it's a little bit like comparing Apple and Android. So with Android you can do a lot more configuration, whereas with Meraki there are a lot of assumptions about a radio resource management. There are a lot of assumptions around, for instance, when it does a heat map, it's a heat map, which is a population density rather than a wireless coverage heat map. So that can cause confusion because normally when you look at heat map, you're looking at, that is a metric for how well it's performing rather than how many devices are using it. So I think that's always at the bone of contention around one of the things it can do.
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.
It is a solution that works very well. It is almost like setup and forget, since the solution works. When issues occur, documentation is available with detailed steps on how to solve this problems you are facing, of course Technical Support is always ready to help. We have had instances where an Access Point fails and within 2 days we have the replacement
To get basic functionality doesn't take long. Set up a new Meraki Dashboard activate the licenses and get internet connection for the APs and you are more or less done. The Dashboard will find your items and you're good to go.
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.
We have not had any issues with the Meraki WiFi Access Point hardware but we did encounter a problem with a Meraki LAN switch that failed to power up. Upon a email into the Meraki Support, they promptly called back and we went over some quick tests to determine a power supply problem. A replacement LAN switch was sent to me the next day.
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.
There were documents that detailed how the WiFi Access Point was to be installed and mounted. The only issue was to cable the device, we use a third party for this type of work and typically has to be performed after normal business hours. Other than that, the installation was easy.
We were more on a Cisco Wireless Controller set up, which takes a lot longer to control and that's why we've actually gone through a cloud-based product, which is very easy compared with the old traditional way that we used to have. It's more ease of software. They've got very similar features, but it's easy to set up and maintain into the future.
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.
As far as I know, it's 10. I mean, because like I said, I manage stuff in the south. I have coworkers that manage it in the north. And so the scalability of it to be able to be go in and see the configurations of the ones in the north as well as they can see in the south. So across the board, it works really well for how widespread out it is.
Uptime has improved significantly. The dashboard automatically keeps devices up to date by scheduling upgrades at remote times (say 2am on a Sunday)
Swapping to Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points has reduced the management overhead. No more long controller software hardware upgrades and obviously no more need for beefy central controllers.
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.
