Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls is a combined UTM and Software-Defined WAN solution. Meraki is managed via the cloud, and provides core firewall services, including site-to-site VPN, plus network monitoring.
$595
per appliance
Oracle SD-WAN (Talari)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The vendor states that Oracle SD-WAN was created to solve the ongoing IT challenges network managers face every day—from expensive, sluggish, inflexible WANs to difficulties deploying new office WAN links and accessing cloud services. With Oracle SD-WAN, enterprises can benefit from internet economics, leverage high-bandwidth and inexpensive Internet connections, and safely migrate applications to the public cloud and SaaS at their own pace. The technology is based on Oracle's 2018 acquisition…
I would say they are pretty close in service delivery and the way they manage link performance. The only thing I would say Citrix is more expensive, but I like Citrix support better ( experience with Citrix LB). We have been using Meraki for a while. It delivers what we …
The MX platform is definitely suited. It seems to be best at the branch locations under a thousand users or so. And then at the data centers, it's been a little bit of a complicated process involving the full stack of the Meraki switches firewall security appliances. It gets a little more difficult within the data centers because the routing protocols aren't built out fully. They're working on, they're adding new features to that. But right now we're still struggling with a little bit of the features that are available within our data centers.
Product has been around for a long time and the stability and features are excellent. Now that Oracle owns it, its long-term viability is both improved (given Oracle isn't going anywhere anytime soon), but all the layers of bureaucracy and auditing that Oracle is famous for comes along with it.
I'm very happy with their analytics now with the tie in with Thousandeyes, it's been really great insight. We now are SD wan, so insight's been really good. So as you know, everyone blames the network and having that kind of analytics from a single pane glass has been wonderful.
Failsafe- ability to aggregate low cost link and increase enterprise WAN bandwidth and also provide safe failor over in case of link interruption, with almost zero drops. In a lab test for voice it works perfectly for voice.
Config Change without system interruption (change config and apply it during Maintenance windows).
So I think that what we've noticed is the template, and I don't actually configure the Meraki, so that's done by our network team that works under me. But what I'm getting from some of the feedback is that with the Meraki we're a little bit limited into the template as to what we can set up for each template individually. And I'm kind of getting that it has to be based on region, it's not really what we want. So we end up with different templates that we have right now that aren't quite meeting our needs. I don't know if a newer version of Meraki might have that issue addressed already, but I find the template isn't as diverse as what I would like it to be.
As we have it in place now, we will continue to keep it at our remote sites. Future expansion is something we are reviewing, and may well start with some of the larger switches as they seem to offer good performance and management at a reasonable price. Wireless is also something we're investing in and their devices are great for that.
The Cisco Meraki MX series is very easy to use. Setting up user VPN access, site to site VPN to tie multiple locations together and managing all your devices. You can even download the latest firmware and install without ever leaving the dashboard. Meraki is the very definition of easy to use
I haven't ever had a bad experience with Meraki support. On the few occasions where I wasn't understanding the UI or needed some clarification about what a setting actually would do, I contacted them and they were very quickly able to provide help. Returns are simple and fast, too. We had to return a defective device one time and they shipped the replacement before we had even un-racked the one that was faulty. Unlike many other vendors, they didn't ask use to a do long list of scripted diagnostics, they just took my word for it that the device was broken and sent out a replacement immediately
We're really using the Meraki more and more, everything from the wireless. We started doing some work with the cameras and security. Meraki has been a great product for our company so far. We use it for a lot of our outer campuses as the VPN Tunneling primary with SD wan. So it's working out very well for us.
While I haven't looked at Silverpeak in a long time and haven't used any of the other big players, this product is a dedicated SD-WAN solution, so no need to get a combination device, unless that's important. We will likely implement SD-WAN through our next firewall platform refresh as a backup to Talari.
The Cisco Meraki MX is basically a good product, but not perfect. If you compare the Cisco Meraki MX with a Fortigate or Cisco Firepower, you quickly realize that this system can do less than the reference product. The Cisco Meraki MX can be used in small environments, but in large environments you have to check carefully whether it really makes sense to use it.
