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Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls - Goodbye CLI!
June 20, 2017

Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls - Goodbye CLI!

Mike Slates | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls

We use Meraki MX Firewalls at each of our 22 locations throughout the Northeast US. The ease of implementation and use is what sold us when it was time to replace our aging Cisco gear. That and all the useful info the Meraki dashboard gives you. Implementing the MXs, along with their Switches(MS) and APs(MR) has really transformed our ability to manage our IT environment.
  • Centralized cloud management. Access the dashboard from any browser anywhere.
  • Auto-VPN. Gone are the tedious/complex days of setting up VPN connections between sites.
  • Intrusion Prevention/Content Filtering/Malware protection. Each can be enabled with the Advance Security License.
  • Application Visibility and Control. Compared to our old ASA, the amount of information you now see is just amazing. Ability to quickly and easily see what machines are hitting what. And then apply traffic shaping rules if you like.
  • The only con I can think of is the lack of performance stats for the MX itself. You cannot see CPU/RAM utilization.
  • Simplified management of our network. Gave us all the info we could want and an easy way to change things.
  • Allows us to make needed changes quickly as they arise.
  • Automatic fail-over to backup circuits. And the ability to utilize both circuits at the same time.
We've been a Cisco shop for a long time. Had we not been introduced to Meraki, we probably would have implemented more Cisco gear. And as it happened, Cisco bought Meraki just after we started deploying them. So it was a win for us.
As for how they compare, performance-wise we have no complaints. Everything just works. The big difference is in the ease of use. Granted, I'm comparing how we connected to the ASA 5 years ago - command line or ASDM vs the web GUI of Meraki. It's night and day.
They make various models, for less than 50 users up through 10,000 users, so I'd say they're probably a fit for most organizations small to large. Heck, I have a MX64 at my house.