Aruba Switches Reviews

We are using it for LAN Switches in our corporate offices with PoE switches and access points. This is primarily a normal LAN switching use case.

They are easy to configure and integrate well with the Aruba ecosystem.

The power supplies are generally susceptible to power fluctuations and failure due to these fluctuations.

We've been using it for four years as Aruba Access Point as well.

There are no serious bugs. The solution is pretty stable.

The customer service is rated nine out of ten.

Positive

The installation is easy. We generally have only one person deploying it.

I have not quantified it exactly, but I would estimate a twenty percent cost savings or improvement in efficiency of operations.

The pricing is a bit on the pricey side.

We had been comparing other vendors, such as Cisco.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I work in the hospitality and medical industry.

Aruba Central is valuable. I use it for management.

The solution must improve the switch models. It has only one type of switch in the CX 4100 series.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten.

Our clients are enterprise businesses. I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten.

I rate the support a seven or eight out of ten. We do not have local solutions in our country. Most people in the companies do not know English, and it is difficult for them to speak with the technical support team. It would be good if the solution provided on-site support in Turkey.

Neutral

I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. The deployment takes three to four days because we work with big companies. The deployment is sometimes difficult.

I rate the pricing a seven or eight out of ten. The tool is a little expensive for customers from other countries. We have a lot of Chinese customers. Aruba is expensive for them.

I am a distributor. I don't use the tool for security because every company has a firewall. We only use AI in Aruba Central. I will recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We've got switches on-premises, and they're managed by central management.

We primarily use the solution for normal office use. It is for normal networking, including wireless. 

I like that I can cloud-manage my network. This is useful due to the fact that I have multiple offices. 

It's a stable product.

We can scale as needed. 

The initial setup is relatively complex.

There is nothing to improve on in an enterprise environment, however, if you're wanting various  functionalities, you need to know how to do these things. It's not straightforward per se. Some training would be ideal for getting the most out of the solution. I had to learn a lot on the job by myself. 

I've been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is very solid, and very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is scalable. We can expand usage if we need to. 

We have 300 people on average using the solution.

In terms of expanding usage, as a solution, at this point in time, I don't need to. With its wifi capabilities, it can handle a little bit more load, so that's fine.

Since I have the solution through a partner, I use the partner services. It's up to them to get me in touch with support if needed.

We had very low-end build switches or old Cisco switches previously, however, they were relatively minor since we had moved to a new office and the company was relatively young at that point in time. Afterward, we made an investment in Aruba.

The initial setup is not necessarily straightforward. It is complex. 

A service partner did the implementation. It took about a month and a half.

We had a service provider assist us with the setup. 

We pay an annual license for the solution. 

It is an enterprise product, so it's not the cheapest, definitely. I'd rate the affordability between a three and four out of five.

I'd recommend the solution if a company wants an alternative to a Cisco environment. It's a very reliable solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

They do have partnerships, and users can get training and insights on how to manage it from a partnership perspective. 

The primary use case of this solution is for Network connection and centralized monitoring and troubleshooting.

The switching configuration is very simple and not as complicated as Cisco. It's easy to do and the deployment is very quick.

When it comes to RMA, the replacement of Aruba parts is very good, and they are very prompt.

There is a limited lifetime warranty with the switches, so if we have any problems, the switch is replaced very quickly. As an example, if I call in the morning, by tomorrow I will receive a box with the replacement.

Visibility and controls need to be improved. When I compare the Aruba switch with Meraki, Meraki has more visibility and more controls.

HPE Aruba has not done any development and research on the SD LAN. They may have another solution for the SD LAN.

Aruba should have SD LAN features to provide more visibility on the network and to be able to control things like the traffic shifting or for voice or data. Currently, Aruba does not have this capability.

It may be there, but it's tedious.

In the next release or the very near future, I think that it is very important to simplify the dashboard and features similar to Meraki. Meraki has a good dashboard and the way they are presenting the information is very useful.

I am forced to consider changing products because other solutions have a better dashboard and a user-friendly interface. Other solutions also have better control and visibility.

This solution is quite stable. To date, we have not had any complaints.

We have our HP IMC (Intelligence Management Center), which is a centralized management control center where I can monitor all of the switches. I can monitor the health of the network appliances, and the CPUs main process. Everything.

This solution is scalable.

We have not had to contact technical support. We handle the issues with our in-house resources.

I have experience with Cisco Meraki switches.

The initial setup is very easy.

The implementation and configuration are not that difficult.

If you have ten to fifteen switches it can take a day. You have to stack it, then put them all together, complete the configuration, the hardening, and the testing, that is a complete full day, eight hours.

I would recommend this product.

I would rate this product a seven out of ten.

We are really just using Aruba Switches for ourselves. We're not like a service provider, but if you ask me, I will recommend it to my colleagues or friends.

It allows us to manage the switches through the cloud, which is good.

I mentioned earlier that managing the switches through the cloud is very beneficial.

Maybe the licensing model could be improved. It's a bit of a pain because it depends on when we activated the purchase.

I've been using Aruba Switches for about three to four years now.

The product has been quite stable. I don't have a lot of experience with technical support because we haven't really required engagement.

I think Aruba Switches are scalable and support our organization's growth.

Technical support has been all right. We may have engaged once or twice, and it was satisfactory.

Positive

The deployment was quite easy and straightforward. It took us maybe 30 to 45 minutes to set it up.

We deployed some of the setup ourselves.

It's very hard to justify return on investment because it's something required for the network to function. I'm not sure how to address that.

We don't have a regular payment system because it's a one-off project that lasts for a few years until a refresh is needed. We pay for each Aruba product separately.

I would recommend Aruba Switches; it's a very stable product.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our clients use Aruba Switches for networking.

The most valuable features of Aruba Switches are the routing protocol and the basic functionality.

Aruba Switches could improve the monitoring and increase the scope of their online portal to cover cloud and on-premise deployments.

I have been using Aruba Switches for approximately two years.

The performance of the solution has been good for all our customers.

One of our clients has approximately 2,000 customers using the solution in the multiple-story business.

Most of our clients are enterprise-sized companies.

I rate the scalability of Aruba Switches a nine out of ten.

I have not had an issue to need the support for.

I have used Cisco and Juniper. Cisco has a high price.

The initial setup of Aruba Switches is straightforward. The full deployment took approximately two months. Some of the factors that increased the time were solution delivery and the customer's use case.

Cisco has a higher cost than Aruba Switches.

I rate the price of Aruba Switches an eight out of ten.

I rate Aruba Switches a nine out of ten.

The solution is high quality, reliable, and can handle heavy workloads.

We primarily use the solution in a hospital setting for switching. 

The newest switches are pretty decent. 

It is slightly more price effective than Juniper and it has a slightly larger range.

The solution could always be a bit cheaper. 

My experience with Aruba's account manager hasn't been the greatest.

Dealing with the server is very complicated. We'd like it to be simplified. 

The setup is complex. 

We've used the solution for three to four months. 

I'm pretty new to the solution. It is hard to gauge stability at this time. 

The solution is scalable. It comes in a range of options. 

The account managers are not the best. They make you do a lot of running around. A lot of the time, they don't even pick up calls. We don't like the way the business side is handled.

The dealers, however, are very responsive. That said, there are just too many rules and regulations when dealing with Aruba. 

As a systems integrator, we work with Aruba, Juniper, and Cisco switches. Aruba has more of a range than Juniper, which is more fixed. 

The initial setup is very complex. 

Typically, the solution is paid for annually.

The price could always be improved upon. 

We are a system integrator. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for extra switches on campuses and consecutive exchange of existing access switches. 

The zero-touch provisioning made it possible for electricians to install and wire the switches that allows for the continuation with the zero touch provisioning mechanism afterward. It has really helped us to save our manpower within the network support group.

The solution's most valuable aspect is that it integrates with ClearPass, which allows us to use the same management for wireless LAN and wired LAN. 

The written documentation, all the available documentation, is often a little bit hard to find. The solution lacks documentation of recent features. We have access directly to Aruba, Germany, so they are always helpful, but if you start, for instance, with something a little bit more complex like zero-touch provisioning, that would require a more comprehensive written piece. 

The available REST API is invaluable for elegant integration with the core and distribution network.  

There are some new multicast features coming up, but they are just in the process of preparation by IEEE, and I would like to see them as soon as possible.

The solution's stability is really great. We found it very solid. 

The scalability of the solution is good. With the management of ClearPass, it's great. We've been using the feature of building stacks with it, and its really, really easy to handle a large scale environment.

Technical support has been great. Together with the consultant, we set up a regular phone call with Aruba to discuss the issues surrounding setting up the whole system. They always came up with quick solutions, called us back and they've been really, really helpful overall.

We previously used Brocade. The switches portion of the organization was bought by Extreme Networks. The company broke down, which is why we had to switch. The hardware of Brocade was brilliant, but at some point, the development and the stability of firmware lacked, since developers may have moved on before the company broke down.

The setup is mostly straightforward. Deployment, together with the WiFi, took about a month. We had three people on our side assisting with the implementation and have three people currently handling maintenance.

We did the initial set up with the help of a service provider of Aruba. We wrote templates and did the first template with the service provider, who was experienced and was really helpful.

With their assistance, the experience was optimal. We had been really late with our decision to purchase Aruba and we, with the help of the consultants, have since been able to bring up the whole system in time so that the existing schedule for opening the hospital was never endangered. 

We just had all the licenses for five years included in the bidding process. Since the competitive nature of the resulting contract, our actual costs might not reflect the standard market prices. Due to the visibilityof our project, Aruba has been generous with the included amount of licenses, which will serve us for years to come.

As a public hospital we are obliged to implement a public bidding process. We had been in discussions with many companies, including, for example, Cisco. 

In the end, it came down to financial issues. Once you have your requirements fixed, every Vendor has the chance to give you a proper offer through ist sales channel. With all the requirements, including for example common management of wired and wireless access, WLAN integrated Bluetooth capabilities  Cisco failed to meet the offer of Aruba.

We've been implementing, with the help of Aruba, with zero-touch provisioning in a newly opened hospital. Roughly 450 switches have been put into operation using zero-touch provisioning (ZTP). It was challenging;  even Aruba probably hadn't done such a large scale project before using ZTP.

In terms of advice, I'd say if you are entering the next stage of switch hardware, of network hardware, just have a look at Aruba. It's really, really helpful having an open API to use Python or other script languages to modify configurations and to automate exchange of state changes with neighbouring structures.

We try to keep as close as possible to standards. There are some areas where standards aren't available, for instance stacking of network Access switches, whre no vendor-independent standards is existing yet. So look at the whole package including the switch hardware, the licenses, the license for management and bear in mind the transceivers. 

When using Aruba switches, stick with the automation tools, don't let yourself be seduced into going back to manual configuration.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. They would be perfect, but there's a noise once they are on under heavy load in a warm environment. It might be the case that they are not usable for installations where the loudness damping between the installation room and office is not sufficient.