Cisco Meraki vMX vs. F5 BIG-IP

We are a heavily invested Meraki environment, from our corporate locations to APs. Using a vMX as apposed another solution is a no brainer. It integrates well, has the same benefits as the rest of the Meraki stack, and you can leverage your favorite cloud platform

Incentivized

I really do think it's well suited for any placement on the edge, especially with the WAF portion. APM is a whole different module unto itself that allows for VPN Connect connectivity, web top access. So it really is for these modules anyway, an edge appliance for us and not really usable in the interior of the network.

Incentivized

• Works well with physical Meraki MX devices
• Site-to-Site VPNs are easy to set up with other Meraki devices
• Cisco Meraki vMX provides a great solution for a virtual environment, like Azure

Incentivized

• Easy connection: you can connect to your corporate network with two clicks.
• IP restriction: F5 has a list of possible insecure IP numbers, if someone tries to connect using one of these numbers, F5 BIG-IP won't connect.
• Always on feature: Very handy feature, if you install always on, you won't need to click connect.

Incentivized

• Client VPN: Cisco Meraki vMX in general needs to implement multiple VPN profiles/ group policies for client VPN
• Alerts: Cisco Meraki vMX in general should be more consistent in sending alerts. We should receive alarms instantly.
• Event logs: More in-depth event logs for all Meraki products, such as system crashes, etc.

Incentivized

• I think the policy configuration that had some improvements on the ASM word things, improvements may be on the signatures that would be good because it's a little bit confusing on the ASL, how they are updated and deployed, and this staging. So that's something that could be.

Incentivized

Only way to to this type of tasks

Incentivized

Great customization and easy to use help reference menus

Incentivized

On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.

Incentivized

implementation is fine

Incentivized

I've used the FortiGate VM appliance many times and this was much better to use, it was a full feature set and had no setbacks ever. But people use Meraki for different reasons likely so it's not 100% apples to apples. As an SR engineer, I demand deep feature sets, etc, while some users strive for simplistic networks that are very visually appealing.

Incentivized

F5 BIG-IP is my first F5 product that I have stared to work, and it brings me more experience doing a lot of migration upgrades from old code version to new code. The way F5 has all configuration help us to develop scrips to improve our process.

Incentivized

We have over 350 locations and growing. We chose Cisco Meraki vMX because of ease of use and how it scales.

Incentivized

• vMX is cheaper than Azure VPN gateway
• there is no native support for HA, so you need to deploy second instance

Incentivized

• Having a load balancer of F5 helps to address large traffic limit on organisation's application
• This means that organisation gets a lot of revenue due to the usage of their application
• Hence provide a very positive impact onthe inverment or ROl of the organisation

Incentivized