Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform Reviews

We are a service provider that uses satellite communications to offer solutions that are built using products from multiple vendors. We call our product SD-WAN Max and it includes applications from vendors such as Silver Peak, Fortinet, and others to help customers best leverage their options.

Unity EdgeConnect is one of the products that make up SD-WAN Max.

Our customers include enterprises that are managing their HQ and ISPs.

EdgeConnect is the component of our solution that makes it manageable.

The most valuable feature is the support for asymmetric lines.

This is the only end-to-end solution, where you can have multiple links. It allows you to manage everything inside your SD-WAN. With other solutions, it is more difficult to manage both sides.

This product is very simple to use.

It supports zero-touch provisioning.

The security can be improved, with the firewall for example, because they supply a basic one but not a UTM. This is why you always need another product to go with it, such as one by Fortinet or Check Point.

We would like to see a VPN included.

We have been working with EdgeConnect for three years.

We have been running EdgeConnect for the last few years on a daily basis and we have no problems with stability.

It is very easy to scale. One of our customers is a telecommunication company that has 80 million people surfing the internet through this product.

The technical support is very efficient. In the few times that we have needed to contact them, we were given answers immediately.

The initial setup is simple.

Our in-house team takes care of implementation and deployment.

We have four people in the company who are experts with this product, and they can do anything with it. In addition, we have another six who handle the management and monitoring, but use other products in addition to it.

The licensing fees depend on the bandwidth. As an example of what we charge our customers, for 100MB without Boost, the price is approximately $2,000. That includes the licensing and the unit.

We tried solutions by three vendors before we selected EdgeConnect. For example, we tried to use Riverbed but it did not work for us. The problem has to do with load balancing and managing traffic.

We have one link that is 2GB with 800 milliseconds, and the second one is 1GB with 200 milliseconds. The other vendors were not able to handle these connections.

My advice for anybody who is implementing EdgeConnect is not to try doing it alone. Select a good partner because there are many things that you have to know and need to be considered. It is an easy solution, but there are limitations that you have to be aware of.

Overall, this is a good product but if they had UTM then it would be great.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The most valuable features of Silver Peak VX are we can register our customers and they can receive free training and all the solutions features.

There are some functional limitations that could improve.

I have been using Silver Peak VX for approximately six years.

The license could improve for Silver Peak VX.

I am satisfied with the solution overall.

I rate Silver Peak VX an eight out of ten.

The use cases are pretty broad simply because we were optimizing the network and the use case if a site had multiple MPLS locations or they were paying for MPLS point to point connections. The main use case was to eliminate the MPLS through the primary carrier, like AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. We would identify all of those use cases where any site that was leveraging a service called Aryaka which was a whole mesh network. We were removing all of that and migrating to Silver Peak over the internet.

Once we had a site where we were using Orchestrator and Unity Edge and we would see the traffic come up. Once we would put in the appropriate change controls and migrate the traffic over from the MPLS, we would see a reduction in traffic by up to 40% between what the MPLS connection was with the new internet Silver Peak connection was using. Companies that had a 10 megabit line that they were using on MPLS would essentially not get a full 10 megabit throughput. When we migrated it over to Silver Peak, given that Silver Peak did acceleration, deduplication, and traffic mapping, we would see a significant improvement in not only the usage of bandwidth but also the deduplication of data that did not need to traverse the wide-area network. 

We had several clients that were paying $7,500 a month for an MPLS line for one single 10 megabit circuit and we were able to take that from $7,500 a month down to $500 a month for two 10 megabits circuits that added redundancy where before they did not have redundancy and it gave them a much better throughput. That was using a standard MPLS line. We put in two 10 megabit internet circuits and put Silver Peak on them and then removed the MPLS circuit. That took their bill from $7,500 a month down to $500 a month.

That's why as soon as we did that and we showed some of our other internal clients what could be achieved, everybody wanted to be first. After that, the flood gates opened and we were up and running.

There were router replacements where some sites might've needed to upgrade their router infrastructure with Silver Peak, you didn't need to do that because it could also function as a mini router. 

There were considerable money savings.

Their WAN optimization in terms of wireless connectivity doesn't have a very good cellular capability. I know of another company that does a much better job called Peplink. I have not specifically used Peplink but I am hearing from a lot of my clients who say Peplink has a great product and does things similar to the way Silver Peak does, but they had a better EdgeConnect type of device that functions very well on cellular connectivity.

I have been using Unity EdgeConnect for four years and we have it deployed to 300 locations over the globe.  It is an encrypted piece of hardware so make SURE you follow correct guidelines for exporting the technology outside the USA.

It's very stable. Out of the 500 devices that we shipped all over the world, we had one that had something wrong with it. It was a hardware failure and we sent it back to Silver Peak and they shipped us another one. And they were back up and running within a week.

Scalability is there. We would buy 500 devices at a time and I spent about four and a half million dollars and they could roll those out in a couple of weeks. The ability to turn it around from Silver Peak to the client was very fast.

The solution was very scalable because the WAN optimization and a Unity EdgeConnect devices would handle anything up to the level of a data center. Boost was the ability to scale up and down performance capabilities from a data center, from the large site in seconds. The scalability of the product is good from a hardware perspective through all of their Edge devices.

There are plans to increase usage. This was deemed one of the most successful projects that we deployed and every new site that comes online gets one of these Silver Peak devices.

Their technical support is very good. They are very responsive. If we had a call or sent an email in, we would typically get at least an acknowledgment within four hours. They worked with us on many occasions when we saw where improvements could be. They were very adept at looking at what we were trying to do. Especially when it comes to application performance and availability capabilities, they were very open. I would give them a high rating, a very positive rating for their customer service and support. 

There was a huge business case that I wrote to replace the Aryaka mesh network and Aryaka did not like that at all. As a matter of fact, three CEOs called me trying to convince me not to do that, but the Aryaka business case just didn't fit the company I was with anymore. We did replace all of our Aryaka sites with Silver Peak.

The primary reasons that we replaced it were because of cost and performance on the network. Aryaka would not do any traffic shaping or traffic management through a wide area network. If you were contracted to have a 10 megabit line and your traffic got up to 10 megabits or maybe spiked and went over say by 11 or 12 megabits, they would just drop your packets. They would not try to resend them. They would not try to buffer them. They just dropped them. We showed them that on several occasions. They refused to acknowledge that they would drop the packets, but we showed them several sites where we said, look, you see here, here are the packet snippers we're watching every packet that goes, here's one that's going through your device, and all of a sudden it drops. They never came back with a solution or a workaround or anything. So we had to get off of this. It's not worth it. We replaced also several NPLS connections from AT&T.

The process was very straightforward for the initial setup. It was so straightforward, even I could do one. And for executive management to be able to do an implementation is saying a lot.

The setup was very straightforward in that connecting the hardware is three wires - four wires if you include a power cable. So once you have the unit, what we term "rack and stack" and we would send pictures to the site and it didn't have to be an IT person to plug this in. We would show them that exactly this color cable goes in this slot, this color cable goes in that slot and then turn it on. And as soon as it's on, then we'll take it from there. And my team would finish the setups, but the site needed to have a public IP address, which was typically not an issue. And then once we configured the site and tested the traffic over it was almost plug and play. Very rarely did we have any special kinds of troubleshooting. If we were not told all of the IP address ranges that a site typically had, then that could have been an issue. But once you've learned that and you've written down the lessons learned for it, we never had that issue again because we would make sure that the sites would tell us every IP address range so that we would not miss any IP addresses that needed to go through the Silver Peak device.

It was very straightforward and we could start reporting on a site what their current bandwidth was, what their traffic speed was when they're getting a full 10 megabit per second or what was the degree of deduplication and traffic shaping that was being done. Sometimes I would talk to the application developers and say, look, your application is constantly doing this and sending huge amounts of data over the WAN; how about if you didn't do that and redo your application to be more efficient in the data transmissions. A lot of them did that and that to me was a kind of an offshoot benefit. It allows you to be able to look at inefficient applications that need to be written in a much more SDLC format.

The deployment would predominantly take roughly three to four days to bring a site online. That was once the equipment was on-site and we had a site contact who could unbox the machine, unbox the box, rack it and stack it and power it up and then we would get it configured and then it would be ready for traffic for testing. So I'd say it would take about a week.

You typically will license the hardware and you license the software to access the hardware capabilities. The price will range anywhere from a hundred to $300 a month. There are no additional costs. 

The additional cost that is needed would be the internet costs. Since most companies, most site locations already have an internet connection. That's a cost that has to be included as part of the cost of Silver Peak.

Out of the 2.7 million that we saved over two years about half came from MPLS and half came from Aryaka savings. 

Silver Peak needs to come up with a 5G solution. They are clearly the leader in the SDWAN software-defined networking for wide area networks. When you're shipping outside of a domestic you well better have your paperwork and documentation set properly. Otherwise, you are going to get in trouble with the government which is typically the United States and the government that you're sending the device to. If you're sending one to France, Germany, anywhere in Europe, there have very strict trade requirements and regulations that have to be filed. And I would dare say that the majority of the companies that are dealing with this now are not in compliance.

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to understand what your sites are doing. If they already have public IP addresses or if they don't, they need to get. If they have point to point, they need to look at what their current level of redundancy is. Many of the sites that we went through had only a single external connection to the internet or to a hub provider, like AT&T, a carrier they need to have, and it's cheap enough now to have two distinct lines such that in the event one line goes down, they're not completely down. They can still have some level of redundancy.

I would rate it nine out of ten. 

I worked on some projects in Panama and Mexico. I did a large project in Mexico making equipment with at least 80 to 85 branches. We used Orchestrator and EdgeConnect Service Provider.

First and foremost, it enables the customer to deploy high availability connections. This kind of solution enables them to deploy these HA connections for policies mostly automatically. It's a more automated approach than with other vendors.

In the case of bandwidth, Silver Peak has a feature that enables the appliance to perform with one of the extensions. They have comparisons and notifications that enable the customer to contract fewer bandwidth links. It returns our investment because they have the ability to make a data link. They can push it. They can even eliminate their MPLS links, push it, and download more links, which makes it cheaper.

In terms of the most valuable features, I'd say it is Silver Peak's deployment. It's the main advantage. I think it is easy to understand and deploy their technology because they use a certain technical approach that they call overlays and underlays. With these two principles, they make use of the technological advantage of their platform.

They are also good in their routing feature. They have all the flavors. They work with other flavors for routing. I think they are good in this field.

I like this solution and I work well with it. But they have to implement more security with it. The security, mainly their firewall functions, have to be included in the firewall features.
They have to work on their integration with other vendors, like Versa does, integrating some little appliance inside of the boxes with a firewall feature. I think that they have to work the other way. It's not within their firewall feature.

The only thing I can point to is their lack of security integration.

In terms of stability, the solution is mostly stable. Once you deploy with Silver Peak, you mostly forget the customer because there are almost no support calls. The customer almost never reports any issues or problems once the program is deployed. It's stable and it's easy to manage.

My impressions are that it's good, it's scalable. Most SD-WAN vendors have to be scalable because when they scale the data center the vendor has to have that ability. In this case, when you scale from three to four to five, seven, eight, 10 service provider connections, you have to deploy the solution in an automated way.

In this case, Silver Peak has some approaches. They have integration with other technologies like Cisco, VCCP, PDR, and VRRP. They use some protocols in order to fix the scale issue. This applies to all SD-WAN vendors. They all have the same issues when talking about the scale.

They have very good technical support.

I know they are growing in the Latin American market but when I was working with them, they were lacking local support or at least the support that can manage cases in the region, taking into account that most customers have some problems the language.

In this case, Cisco has local support teams in the region, they have a good tech center in Costa Rica, and they have tech centers in South America, too. The same with Fortinet. Fortinet and Cisco are well-positioned here.

Silver Peak has a good approach to Cloud managed solutions. They do lack some integration in the security field because the EdgeConnect devices have invalid basic firewall features. But in this case, I understand Versa has a more integrated solution that includes security with the detection and so on.

I know that Fortinet and Cisco Meraki have firewalls integrated into their SD-WAN devices. I can say that Silver Peak is struggling with this feature. But in the SD-WAN feature itself, I think that Silver Peak is the easiest to use, to deploy, and to manage. There are only two basic components, including their Orchestrator, which is their brain, their main connection point.

Silver Peak's devices, compared to Cisco Meraki, are the most practical to use and deploy and have less interface. I work in two or three parameters with financial customers, mostly banks. They use Silver Peak for interconnecting their banks with the main location and integrating their many Service Provider links into one single box.

It's easy to deploy and easy to manage. They have fewer elements than all the other vendors. They have only two elements, their dashboard, and their appliance.

As an example, with the last five last branches, it was implemented in two days.

Implementation depends on a per-client basis. In Latin America, I can tell you that most networks have mixed topologies and they have mixed vendors in their network. They have mixed policies and no customer is able to talk to another. They have some misunderstandings between customers even in the same country. So when it comes to deploying SD-WAN policies in Latin America, they have to work hard in the design because this design will facilitate the deployment. In most SD-WAN projects, the bulk of the work is in the design part. The key is the design.

Because of this, I became involved with the designing. 

Unity EdgeConnect is very simple. They have an appliance for all budgets and prices. I think that they are very competitive in their pricing. I compared their price with others and it was well-positioned.

They have very understandable price points. Their pricing is per manage group. If you want to deploy another specific solution, like cloud-managed, then you have to have some other licenses that you can apply which are also very understandable and simple.

Our clients do indeed see a return on their investment with Silver Peak.

I know all this from my searching among other vendors. Cisco is the most complex - they have many elements involved. Cisco Meraki is basically simple. It's super, but they have some features that they are working with right now. They have some limitations, too. I think Fortinet has some limitations, too, mostly in the way they work with the high availability and the packet server connections.

My main advice regarding the SD-WAN product is to do research the customer's topology well. A good understanding of the customer's policies and the customer's implemented technologies, their topology, is important. It is important that they have a good design because the design is the key to success in this kind of space.

It is same when we were working with WAN optimization. You have to do good research before implementing a product. The key is still the same.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them at eight. 

What I learned from working with them was that their approach is to simplify the deployment and their overall solution. By eliminating many elements from the equation, you have a better understanding of the solution and then a better managed solution.

Silver Peak VX helps move data between data centers in the cloud.

The most valuable feature of Silver Peak VX is the overall performance.

I have been using Silver Peak VX for approximately one month.

Silver Peak VX is stable. From what I've heard from our technicians, there is no complaint from the current customers that are using the solution.

We have five customers using Silver Peak VX.

The technical support is okay, we have not had any complaints.

Silver Peak VX is simple to set up because we have people trained with certification and do the implementation. Most projects take approximately one week, but it can depend on the complexity of the installation environment. If it is a more difficult project it could take up to a month to implement.

The price of Silver Peak VX is expensive compared to competitors. There are licenses, renewals, and support that need to be paid.

We have not had a lot of requests for Silver Peak VX. We have only been doing renewals.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Silver Peak VX a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is as a WAN accelerator.

This solution has many great features, including:

• I really love the auto-tunnel creation feature.  
• The deployment modes that it has allows it to fit into any architecture, whether it be a Layer 2 environment, or a Layer 3 environment, or support for BGP, etc.
• It allows me to set QoS policies and then route policies.

Overall, what I find most valuable are its flexibility and deployment.

I would like to see better documentation for the integration of STDP traffic acceleration. That's one of the major things that people do not have good documentation for, and do not know how to deploy. Maybe a feature deployment guide is something that they can create.

More specific knowledge base articles would be of benefit. They have a CLI guide, but it does not come handily when it is time to deploy.

When it comes to features, there is no documentation that lists the details concerning them. They need to create a feature guide. For example, if somebody wants to know if a feature is supported, or what the benefits of it are, or what the loopholes are that they should be aware of, there is no documentation for that.

Reporting is something that they can improve on. Specifically, I would like a bandwidth monitoring tool. They have brilliant graphs that show bandwidth savings, but I would like to see it on a per-application basis.

Another thing that I find is that many people do not know about this solution. It should be marketed better so that people are more aware of it.

Four years.

The stability of this solution is quite good. If you have a standard deployment with typical policies in place, and no custom applications, then you may not need to look at it for a couple of years. Once the deployment is done, you will yield the benefit.

Sometimes there are problems with very customized deployment modes, where the system traffic will cause problems and you have to reboot it every two or three months. It generally depends on what applications are being run in the environment.

Specific applications can also be discussed with the technical support team, and they may find a way to identify these issues and resolve them permanently.

In-house applications can sometimes cause problems, but for known protocols, there is no issue.

I don't think that scalability is a problem. If you have higher traffic then give it more CPU power, bandwidth, and RAM, and it should work fine.

Every device, regardless of vendor, has its limitations. However, as a generic case, it is perfectly scalable.

Technical support is awesome, and transparency is there.

If there is a feature that is not there, they will help you to create a workaround. They will give you access to the device and let you play with it. They will not say that they cannot do it, as some other vendors might say. When this happens, they will raise an FR (Feature Request) and will see what can be done. After a couple of months, or perhaps even years, the feature may be implemented. In the meantime, you have a workaround if it is possible. They sometimes come by the office and explain that the feature cannot be implemented directly, but will then assist you with the workaround.

The initial setup and deployment are quite simple. You can just log in to the device and it will guide you. It will give you a deployment page, you can get your IPs, click Ok, and you're done. You don't need to invest much time. The deployment guide is there if you need it.

We assist our customers with the implementation of this solution.

When it comes to buying a WAN accelerator, the number one thing that you save is bandwidth. This is one data point that you should look for when you are doing your POC. If you are not saving bandwidth then it makes no sense to deploy.

If you are saving on bandwidth then the next thing to compare is the application latency. Previously, an application may have been working fine, but problems may occur, such as a slow UI, because certain things are not being passed or fully processed. So, it is important to make sure that all of the applications are still functioning correctly. Then, finally, look to see that the application performance has improved.

For ROI, it isn't that money is directly returned to you. Rather, it is realized in the savings for using a lower bandwidth, or in not having to upgrade your bandwidth with your provider. As a second point, your application's performance will improve over a period of time.

You have to negotiate when it comes to pricing and licensing.

I do not think that the solution is costly, as it is still cheaper than its competitors.

It also depends on the relationship that you have with the vendor, being a standard user versus being in a partner-level program. Your benefits will vary.

For people who are considering this solution, I would suggest doing a POC first to see if it fits. If it works in your environment then you will get a good product at a cheaper rate.

The first thing to look for is the benefit that it gives. Once you see that, then the next thing is to ensure that it does not impact the people who are trying to use it. You need an architect to design your WAN acceleration, because if something goes wrong then it can cause problems in the entire network.

This solution is not perfect because the reporting can be improved. It is still possible to obtain the data and do the analytics using a custom tool, but this is why I am taking one point off.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use the product for WAN optimization.

The platform is valuable for bandwidth reduction.

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform’s stability and technical features need improvement.

We have been using the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform for four years.

It is a stable product. I rate its stability a seven out of ten. We encountered a few stability issues.

We have five Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform users in our organization.

The technical support services are good.

Neutral

The platform is easy to install. It requires only one executive for maintenance.

We implemented the product in-house.

The product generates a valuable return on investment.

The product is good. I rate it an eight out of ten.