HPE Aruba Networking Switches vs. Huawei Ethernet Switches

These devices are rock solid, you will se them up once and not have to mess with them for years. They are work horses that don't die. We use them in an office environment and have only ever had 1 fail due to a PSU issue, we got a replacement next day and it's been working great.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• REST API capability
• Wired & Wireless 802.1x configuration easiness
• Wireless Access Points (APs) zero touch provisioning
• Its high-end family (running the AOS-CX firmware) supports a virtualization technology called VSX (Virtual Switching Extension) which allows 2 switches to present itself as one virtualized switch under Layer 2, and as 2 separate routers under Layer 3; thereby providing high availability.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• I have had issues finding monitoring software that natively supports Provision/Aruba OS. Most are designed primarily with Cisco in mind.
• HPE/Aruba switches have historically had issues with corrupt flash. This seems to be less common in more recent models.
• HPE/Aruba's switching portfolio can be confusing. Some models run on the Aruba OS while some others run on Comware. There is some overlap in these model lines so at times is can be tough to tell which switch is right.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

I have not had that many issues with these products. Aruba Central has been really helpful. The Integration Capabilities allows us to use Clearpass . For individuals new to enterprise-grade networking, there can still be a learning curve associated with understanding the concepts and the specifics of the Aruba configuration.

Incentivized

The switches perform very well in our core backbone and also in metro Ethernet networks. We are able to provide high service availability and greater resilience for our customers. The switches also provide high performance in several data centers where we have a presence focused on IX exchange. They are also very useful as CPEs.

HPE Support is very easy to reach. A knowledgable rep can be reached in a few minutes. After some basic troubleshooting if the failure is due to hardware I can receive a replacement within a day or even in a few hours.

Incentivized

We used to have a lot of Cisco switches which are great, but
the support contracts and other expenses mount up quickly; one of the main
reasons for switching to HP for networking was the cost, but the hardware and
software have gotten so much better over the years.

I can’t see us changing network hardware unless the price increases dramatically.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• I really like the idea of paying for the switches one time and just pay for support going forward. The prices are on the high end but I think it is worth it. I wish they would include all the features in one go so we would not have to pay for every new feature.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized