Cisco Meraki vMX vs. F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Meraki vMX
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco's Meraki Virtual MX (vMX) is a virtual instance of a Meraki security & SD-WAN appliance, dedicated specifically to providing the simple configuration benefits of site-to-site Auto VPN for customers running or migrating IT services to an Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).N/A
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
F5 Networks provides BIG-IP Access Policy Manager as an identity and access solution which can be deployed as a standalone solution or as an add-on to F5 Networks' flagship BIG-IP TLM or F5 Advanced WAF applications.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Virtual Private Network
Comparison of Virtual Private Network features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Meraki vMX
8.5
7 Ratings
5% below category average
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
7.3
8 Ratings
20% below category average
AES 256-bit Encryption9.77 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Kill Switch10.01 Ratings7.44 Ratings
Multi-Platform Support6.95 Ratings7.95 Ratings
Split Tunneling8.15 Ratings8.22 Ratings
IP Address Masking7.94 Ratings7.03 Ratings
No-Logs Policy6.52 Ratings4.53 Ratings
Multiple Server Locations8.85 Ratings6.44 Ratings
Simultaneous Connections9.76 Ratings7.96 Ratings
Customer Support Services9.36 Ratings7.45 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
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Score 6.8 out of 10
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Score 6.8 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(10 ratings)
8.4
(18 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(6 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Meraki vMXF5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
I think for us in our deployment model where it spoke to the hub, it certainly makes ideal sense. I would probably say with anyone that's signed in Azure or a cloud platform, obviously VMX appliance may not be suited. Anyone on Old Legacy MPLS may struggle to see a purpose for SD-WAN overlay of the top. But I think if you really want to introduce network communications that are low cost effective, solid in terms of availability and performance, a Meraki sdwan solution with the VMX appliance in the cloud is ideal.
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F5
I think that the platform is well suited to many Remote Access VPN solutions, but I also think there is a lot of room for improvement on the backend. If you are hoping to deploy your APM solution across many different datacenters or colos, it may not be the best choice for the final solution.
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Pros
Cisco
  • 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
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F5
  • SAML 2.0 identity federation support.
  • Integrates with third-party SSO solutions.
  • Bridging modern authentication and authorization (SAML, OAuth/OIDC) and classic authentication and authorization methods.
  • Policy routing
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Cons
Cisco
  • 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.
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F5
  • There's some more advanced configurations within OAuth that I think could be fleshed out and easier to approach.
  • There's a lot of things in F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager policies that I find myself recreating every policy. An easier way to copy objects from one to policy to another.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
No answers on this topic
F5
Integration with F5 BIG-IP systems that we plan to keep using for a while.
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Usability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
F5
If F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager usability is fine it's not hard to use if you read the documentation but it does feel dated and could use a responsive design update to modernize user interface to current standards.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
The VMware SD wan does give some better WAN metrics, but the interface is super clunky and doesn’t support a full stack. If Meraki could give some more QoE link metrics, it would be perfect.
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F5
It is open platform so support is not good and than F5 and features visibility as not good as F5. F5 Set up and easy to use to admin console. Also have more feature visibility for load balancing, web server accelerator, application server ddos protection and WAF. F5 more efficient to handle concurrent request.
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Scalability
Cisco
We have over 350 locations and growing. We chose Cisco Meraki vMX because of ease of use and how it scales.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Some users it knocks down on maintenance labor/cost
  • Negative would be if you didn't really vet the feature set to the customers needs and end up having to replace it short notice.
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F5
  • Simplified our approach to company-wide VPN solutions greatly by allowing us to use a single product instead of multiple products like we had before
  • Can handle 15000-20000 users at once with no issues
  • Was able to configure to support users travelling with 4G connections on their laptops and accommodate constant changing IP addresses
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ScreenShots