These switches perform amazingly at the access layer, aggregate, or even as a router. Solid performance, reliable, and cost-effective. Support is first class with both their onsite support and telephone support. The ability to Interop with any other vendor without difficult administration or clumsy CLI/WebGUI.

Pros and Cons

Reliability
Scalable
Dual Flash

Documentation
Built in Help for commands
Consistency between models

Likelihood to Recommend

I love this switch for access and aggregate, especially due to the lack of needing reboots. [Other systems require this] reliable and stable platform.

Most Important Features

Dual Flash
Reliability
Stability

Return on Investment

Equipment just runs
Sometimes past EOL/EOS
Firmwares just work

Alternatives Considered

Arista Campus Switches, Juniper EX Series Switches and HPE Aruba Ethernet Switches

Ruckus outperformed other vendors, especially those priced higher than ruckus. The performance for the cost allows for a longer reliable use over other vendors evaluated.

Other Software Used

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches, Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco Catalyst 2960-L Series Switches

January 08, 2019

Ruckus ICX Switches Rock

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employees

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Ruckus ICX switches in a managed environment for VLANs. We have a VMware environment, and use the hosts to the SAN through the ICX switches 10GB ports. The 1GB ports connect through to our F5 load balancers and from there to our Cisco firewalls. We created VLANs for the host to SAN connections to direct traffic specifically between them. We set up management ports to manage via the GUI. Although the CLI is what I use primarily, it's nice to see the GUI for stats when I am watching other parts or that network. Otherwise, I use unused ports for hooking unmanaged equipment into my network.

Pros and Cons

VLANs are easily set up, via the GUI or Command line interface.
The 10 GB ports work flawlessly.
The commands are easy enough to learn.

Licensing for the 10GB ports is a bit pricey, but that was 5 years ago, so things may have changed
The CLI commands are slightly different than typical Cisco commands
Their rack mounting was not the prettiest in the world

Likelihood to Recommend

Creating VLANs for Vmware (or any virtualized environment) is exactly what these are meant for. You need this type of equipment in those environments to function. We are a production 24/7 environment, and the reliability and service (speed, low error rate) make these switches ideal for this environment. If you don't need a managed switch environment, like an internal network with minimal security where no separation of LAN is needed, you don't need these. BUT looking back on previous work environments I was in, with older technology where we didn't have these types of switches, since using them I see places we could have improved network performance and had security that was not available without managed switches where we could segregate work processes

Return on Investment

These switches are very good in the virtual environment. We have a highly reliable network in part because of these switches
The high uptime allows the business to offer reliable always-on connectivity to our clients
Speeds are fantastic, especially in a big data environment where speed is crucial to our remote client base

Other Software Used

Cisco ASA, HP ProLiant DL, HPE Nimble Storage

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