Cisco Meraki MS Review
June 11, 2024

Cisco Meraki MS Review

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • MS350-24P
  • MS350-48

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MS

So generally use this as the access layer, connect devices to it, connect up to the distribution switches, and that sort of thing. Also, use it to connect wireless access points and that sort of thing. So basically as a switch and yeah, just use it for different functions. So different sites.

Pros

  • So I enjoy the GUI, I think it makes the product comes with it makes it very easy to kind of see what's going on. I like that you're able to manage a lot of switchboards all at once and do a lot of modifications there. And it has a lot of security features that generally you have to configure on the CLI, but it comes as part of just the gooey part that you just implement there. I think it does redundancy very well. It does span and tree very well, so the switches between the interfaces and the switches, you can just set what the route is going to be pretty easily. And the troubleshooting for the device is very well. You need to call and get support. It's very quick and they solve a problem very quickly so it's great.

Cons

  • It's kind of a double-edged sword with the GUI because you get a clean interface but you lose some, of being able to do granular things with it. And I've had certain things where you're looking for where to find the thing, you're on the device and that can be kind of tricky having to click to different menus and certain things get a little confusing when you're trying to put it in a larger scale. Also, I think that there's other products that are similar like the Cisco MS390's that have features of the Cisco MS3 fees and it makes it kind of hard when making purchasing decisions because if you're already committed to one now you have to swap to another one to get a certain feature you might want. And so some compatibility issues can be kind of tricky.
  • I would say it's had an overall positive impact on business objectives. Staying up sites quickly in a timely manner is very important and other teams relying on the network to the up in order to do their jobs. And so being able to quickly deploy sites has been a boon and be able to see and configure and that sort of thing. Also because a lot of it's cloud managed, we're able to configure ahead of time and so there's a lot of things we can do before the switches are even onsite. And so yeah, it's definitely sped up a lot of processes.
So I'd say we've definitely benefited from the ease of deployment and management, especially with the troubleshooting. It's been helpful when you have to call in and whatnot and getting people quickly onboard and understanding of what the environment looks like. And so I think that's all been great visibility as well, trying to show people what's going on. I've had a lot of success with just taking screenshots and be like, here's what it looks like, here's what it is. And they can clearly understand, especially people who aren't in the fields, I'm trying to show like, oh this port's bad, or oh you're getting this issue. It's like here's a picture, a thousand words. And so those areas, it's definitely helped out, especially people on my team as well. And they take a look, they take screenshots and do the same thing. It's like here's the proof. And so proving what is actually going on behind the scenes has been very helpful.
More Cisco Meraki products, so Cisco Meraki Access Points, the MR70s, MR37s, MS 45 switches, MXs, so Cisco Meraki products of different types.
I would say probably eight. I think there's a lot of, the scalability is very nice and I've definitely deployed a lot of sites quickly. I think for us right now that we have to pivot away from manual configurations and using automated configurations. And so just being sure we prevent things like drift between sites is kind of important right now for us. And so I think that's the next steps for us in that product. And so I think if there was better documentation or better best practices about how to automate and deploy standardized, I think that would help.
I dunno if I've used any other product like that. Honestly. Closest thing would be like Palo Alto, but they don't really because they have a little bit of a gooey and they do the firewall and that sort of thing and you can connect to Panorama and do modifications there. The only difference is I think with Palo Alto you can still get to the CLI if you want to and so that is kind of a benefit, but Rocky's kind of a different thing in that regard. So I worked with other switches and that sort thing, but they were all CI based, so I haven't really used too many gooeys with that stuff.

Do you think Cisco Meraki MS delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Cisco Meraki MS's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Meraki MS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Meraki MS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Meraki MS again?

Yes

I think branch offices and smaller locations are really good areas where you're trying to stand up sites quickly, point of presence sites are very good for it. I've had a lot of success in just quickly getting things out there and deploying them with the solution. And yeah, I'd say those are probably good locations for it.

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