Cisco Meraki MS - A solid all rounder
March 14, 2025

Cisco Meraki MS - A solid all rounder

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

Modules Used

  • MS120-24P
  • MS120-48FP

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MS

Cisco Meraki MS are part of a suite including Meraki MX routers/firewalls along with MR wireless access points. They are primarily used in small-medium offices that are not considered large corporate offices but need a reliable easy to manage solution. Being cloud managed and easy to manage it provides a way for less technical staff to review/administer the devices but corporate security policies can be applied when necessary. A new switch can easily be deployed with no console cable. That's a big bonus.

Pros

  • Ease of deployment. No console cable
  • Can be simple flat vlan, or scale to stacks, dot1x, etc.
  • When integrated with MX and MR, a site topology diagram is built automatically on the Cisco Meraki Dashboard

Cons

  • Possibly a CLI interface for technical staff to issue commands
  • Higher end models for corporate offices
  • Offline mode. Some environments may not have internet access at all
  • Cisco Meraki MS saves time and money on deployment costs. New units can be sent to site and deployed without a network technician needing to be present, or annoy the local team asking for a console cable
  • Cisco Meraki MS saves time and money on maintenance, especially software upgrades. The dashboard can be set to upgrade at 1am on a Sunday and being cloud managed the team have full confidence that it will come back with no operational impact. To do this with Catalyst Switches is significantly more time and/or software costs for proper software
Not all organisations have a dedicated network team. Cisco Meraki MS along with other Meraki products allow general IT staff to quickly deploy and also easily maintain network infrastructure.

Even with a network team, the use of Cisco Meraki MS allows that component to be easily managed and the network team can focus on the higher end kit in large offices/data centres.
Integrating a whole site with MX, MR and MS devices means a one stop shop for all wireless/wired/firewall type issues. A technician with read only access may be able to triage issues and help resolve them without escalating to the network team. This is very important for speedy resolution of issues.
I don't think Cisco Meraki MS is at the point where it can scale to very large offices. But for most other deployments it can scale quite well. Anything under 150 people or a remote site and Cisco Meraki MS should be part of the decision process.
Cisco Meraki MS is ideal for small-medium and remote offices where IT staff never visit. I don't feel they are ready to support large offices or campuses with thousands of people. However in my opinion some offices can be Cisco Meraki MS and others can be Catalyst and it can work quite well. Horses for courses so to speak.

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

Yes

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

Yes

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

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Meraki MS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Meraki MS again?

Yes

A Cisco Meraki solution should always be in the toolbox for a small-medium office. Especially for a project team that moves around a bit. It is very easy to deploy and if after 6 months the project moves to another location, re-deployment times are much faster than traditional kit.

Whilst it could do the job. It is not at the point of replacing a large corporate office of Catalyst Switches but we feel it does not need to do that necessarily.

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