Cisco Meraki MS vs Huawei Ethernet Switches

Likelihood to Recommend

This product will go to the top of the list of what I will use again. It makes support significantly easier and that is important to the operations here. I feel this is a strong candidate to be used in just about any configuration. It is very adaptable.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 51-200 employees

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Huawei switches are ideal for cases where performance is not essential, for low traffic solutions and for equipment management. It is not recommended for situations of high performance and stress, immediate availability and high scalability. It is also not advisable to use them in solutions that involve hardware from other brands, the integration of Huawei with Cisco, for example, is very traumatic and the results were not optimal in my case.

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Amilcar Jose Salazar Siry

Lider de proyectos

CANTVTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Pros

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.

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Jane Updegraff

Senior Systems Administrator

DRT Holdings, Inc.Aviation & Aerospace, 501-1000 employees

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Scalability
High throughput links
Redundancy of links with resilient protocols
Fast switching in the event of a redundant link failure.

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Gilson Jose do Nascimento

Network Engineer

ALOO TELECOMTelecommunications, 201-500 employees

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Cons

People who are coming from enterprise switches or command line options may feel limited
If internet is having issue, managing the switches can become more burdensome
Switches do not have as many advanced features as enterprise switches
Delay in reporting and debugging

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kevin mcgillicuddy

IT Infrastructure Supervisor

Sight and Sound TheatresEntertainment, 201-500 employees

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One of our switches encounted a hardware defect after 6 months of use (but was replaced within warranty)
The switches appear to get hotter than what I would expect under normal use

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Dylan Eikelenboom

Security Officer

IXON CloudInformation Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

—

Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Meraki MS 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Great product and we're always watching for new additions from meraki

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Verified User

Manager in Customer Service

Architecture & Planning Company, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cisco Meraki MS 9.0

Based on 25 answers

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.

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Laurance J. Specht

IT manager

Brooklyn Laboratory Charter SchoolEducation Management, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Meraki equipment is easier to configure, setup, and deploy as well as manage. The only thing I will say for the other gear is that they have their special niche requirements, protocol options, and special configuration options that not all Meraki gear has. Meraki gear cannot do everything that other switches out there can do for specific requirements. For the most common network requirements, Meraki can do it!

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Trevor Harley

Senior Network Administrator

Birchcliff Energy Ltd.Oil & Energy, 201-500 employees

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The performance of Huawei is lower than Cisco, but initially the costs inclined the decision towards Huawei, but unfortunately, it was not, the licenses and the manager fired the investment to make it very similar to cisco. Therefore it is preferable to go to the Cisco switches for reliability and robustness.

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Amilcar Jose Salazar Siry

Lider de proyectos

CANTVTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Scalability

Cisco Meraki MS 9.3

Based on 15 answers

We have had no trouble linking multiple switches together with a daisy chain cable. We have done this throughout our building and have added them as switch stacks so that they appear as one large switch. It's even better when combined with port aggregation on our fiber feed lines for 20GB throughput back to the core network.

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John Glenn

Network Operations Manager

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)Religious Institutions, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

One critical business objective was a worry-free network. This is it!
Another business objective was to be able to manage my entire network from a single interface. Meraki delivers again! Not having to be in the building to monitor, manage and configure networking equipment is worth the weight of these devices in gold.
I wanted to be able to see everything that was happening on my network. Meraki enables that. I can see every device, what each is doing, set alerts for when individual ports go down or the device that is attached stops sending packets, etc. The visibility into my network's performance and security is unprecedented. I never knew what I was missing and I do not want to go back!

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Nathan Roberts

Director, Management Information Systems

CareerSource FloridaPublic Policy, 11-50 employees

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Revenue Increase
Greater satisfaction for our customers.
Greater compliance with SLAs

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Gilson Jose do Nascimento

Network Engineer

ALOO TELECOMTelecommunications, 201-500 employees

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Cisco Meraki MS vs Huawei Ethernet Switches

Cisco Meraki MS

Huawei Ethernet Switches

Attribute Ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco Meraki MS

Huawei Ethernet Switches

Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Meraki MS

Huawei Ethernet Switches

Support Rating

Cisco Meraki MS

Huawei Ethernet Switches

Product Scalability

Cisco Meraki MS

Huawei Ethernet Switches

Pros

Cons

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

Likelihood to Renew

Support Rating

Alternatives Considered

Scalability

Return on Investment

Add comparison