Cisco Meraki MX Review
August 11, 2020
Cisco Meraki MX Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- MX100
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX
I've used Meraki MX devices as edge firewalls, client VPN, content filtering, point to point VPNs, and layered network control. These devices are pretty straightforward and easy to understand. The Meraki MX devices have rarely if ever had hardware failures and have been able to keep up with the workload our company has needed them for. The capabilities that come in them with either license should fulfill most of any SMB's needs.
- Dashboard management is the best. It's the most straightforward and easy to understand interface I've used.
- Access control is easy to configure
- Point to point VPN is very easy to get going and the Meraki cloud helps connect them together compared to other firewalls
- Their logs are pretty detailed and are very helpful to understand issues or errors you are getting.
- Their dashboard is very easy. That is great, but occasionally you need to do more or expect to have more options. It can be limiting.
- The time it takes for the dashboard changes to take effect can be frustrating. You will make a change and need to wait up to 20 minutes to see if what you changed worked.
- The dashboard is limiting when you have a misconfiguration, or it will give you little to no detail on why you can't do what you want. So you have to figure that out on your own.
- Their tech support isn't as technical as other vendors.
- Provides safe connection at all times
- Up time with off-hour updates has had a positive impact on us.
- Reduces risks with good content filters
- Point to point VPN has helped reduce the need for MPLS.
We can easily mail a device to a site and have someone plug it in for us and once it gets onto the internet we can get it up and running so it has saved some travel time. We can make the changes from anywhere so we don't need to be on-site or even connected to VPN to make changes.
We use it with Cisco Umbrella. It has options in the MX to use umbrella services for DNS protection. It can also be integrated with DUO for the login. I've also managed to do a point to point with an old ASA 5506-X that wasn't due to be replaced for a little while.
I've used traditional ASAs with and without firepower, newer firepower only Cisco firewalls, and Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. I think Meraki stacks up pretty well to them with most features. I think managing the Meraki is much easier than all of them because of the dashboard. If you need to really dig into some harder security settings then I think Meraki starts to be a little less appealing. You can do a lot with the FortiGates, ASAs, and firepower devices that Meraki can't.