Meraki reporting and cloud deployment is hands down better than any others. Ease of setup and deployment, visibility into the data, ease of use and the lack of arcane tools to manage them makes it a no-brainer. The dependability has also been amazing. I used to have to reboot …
(1) Cisco Small Business switches are a similar price point to PowerConnect, often with fewer features but with easier management. (2) Cisco traditional switches are more expensive than PowerConnect. They are of a similar level of complexity. These compare similarly in …
Cisco Meraki MS is brilliant in very simple environments where basic segregation is required. Many features are pre-configured as defaults and this makes it easy to configure security and stability features like STP protections and UDLD. It is capable of some more complex functions, such as dot1x authentication. TAC support is easy to access and usually timely. Bundling support into the license and making it available through Dashboard is great. We have had issues monitoring the Cisco Meraki Dashboard using legacy SNMP based system - this means we now effectively have one more network monitoring screen to watch. We also sorely lack an ageing timer for stick MAC address port security - essential in uncontrolled locations with no NAC available. We have also had issues with devices pulling DHCP leasing from the wrong VLAN on initial provisioning and then struggling to transition to our management VLAN when the full config is pulled.
We work in the electric industry. These should not be used in a high-heat environment. We like to keep the temperature of the room in the low 60's so they are not suited for our Substation locations due to extreme heat and cold. However, they perform great in a server room.
Meraki MS switches are wonderful at allowing a network admin to configure a VPN mesh network without having to have highly specialized knowledge. Unlike Cisco switches, there is no CLI, there is only a GUI, and Meraki support helps you set it up as you add nodes to your network.
Meraki MS switches are easy to deploy. Full stop.
They can work with any firewall or ASA but I would strongly recommend using the Meraki MX security appliance if you are going to use Meraki MS switches because they were made to work together.
They easily stack. It's all done for you in the Meraki cloud control panel.
They will get an address from your admin VLAN's DHCP scope and keep it. Even if you unplug it and move it, you will not have to worry about addressing it.
The GUI is online and you can reach it from anywhere, so as long as you have the credentials, you can manage the network from any device that has a browser.
Being on the cloud its very easy to manage. We have layer 7 visibility and Cisco has introduced stackable MX switches which is even better! The Meraki portal can be accessed via SSO which is important to my organization (although it was a bit difficult to get that implemented initially!)
Cisco support for the Meraki products is great. I have a dedicated representative who I can reach out to at any time. They offer numerous online resources and easy to follow tutorials to help the most novice user feel like a pro. When I need support they were ready and quickly helped me solve my problems.
Dell ProSupport is outstanding. Dell ProDeploy is likewise outstanding. I prefer them even over traditional Cisco support. I've had repeated cases where Dell immediately addressed or fixed an issue with US-based support, including firmware hotfixes. Not even Cisco can boast that.
Meraki MS provides the sweet spot between manageability and functionality, though not at a significantly lower cost. Desktop support engineers can manage it day-to-day and sometimes that is the most important factor, especially in our case, as a layer 2 switching solution that can also provide PoE to the Meraki MR WAPs.
I selected Dell mainly due to previous experience using them in a business environment. I've never had a unit fail on me and when my budget for equipment like network switches has been less than a training class on how to use those switches, it's incredible to be able to find quality equipment at the price point Dell offers and even more so when their enterprise support has been as excellent as I have been accustomed to dealing with. In all honesty, even if I had a larger budget, I would have bought these same switches since they were exactly what I needed to suit my needs. We looked into HPE/Aruba network switches, and while they would have performed everything we needed and more, they were almost four times the cost of these Dell network switches. That's a hard sell when it comes to planning a tight budget.
Cisco Meraki MS is intuitive and allows us to easily manage 340+ satellite locations and four corporate locations. Templates, intelligent patching, and alerting are fantastic. This has drastically improved compliance and managing such a large footprint. I would continually recommend Cisco Meraki MS for any multi-site organization because of its ease of use.
