Aruba Wireless Reviews and Pricing

Executive Director of Innovation at a hospitality company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 29, 2015

The remote access through RAPS is a feature that simplifies access for our providers at home, and provides continuity of security, but the configuration is detailed and can be complex.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features for me are:

Built-in firewall
Security
Authentication
Remote access
Stability

How has it helped my organization?

Providing wireless to our clinicians and providers allows them to be mobile within the facility and still maintain connectivity to valuable information, like our Electronic Health Record. The remote access through RAPS is a feature that simplifies access for our providers at home, and provides continuity of security. In addition we provide guest wireless to our patients and families which improves satisfaction.

What needs improvement?

The configuration is extremely detailed and can be quite complex. For a small IT staff, it is difficult to make changes without outside consulting or Aruba Support.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used it for two years. We're using a 3400 controller with AP105 Access Points. The software version is 6.3.1.9_44832.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There were no issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product has been very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No. We have added Access Points and Remote Access Points as needed. We also expanded to a redundant controller which allows High Availability.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

Service has been good - 8/10.

Technical Support:

8/10

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched to Aruba because of the advanced security. In healthcare we have HIPAA compliance to achieve and maintain. Security is a priority.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up the controller is complex. The SSIDs, Authentication methodology, Access, is all quite complex to set up. Not for a novice.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team to implement. We used a third party consulting firm to assist with setting up the redundant controller. Both were very good.

What was our ROI?

This product is considered infrastructure. It is a cost of doing business. It allows our business to be more flexible and mobile. But there is no direct ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Aruba has made changes to their licensing to make it more cost effective. Work with a partner that is familiar with all of the features in this product so that you get the licensing you need. Not all features are available with basic licensing. You need to determine the feature set you want, and then look at pricing for that feature set.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

HP and Cisco. HP was not secure enough. We had HP in house already. We looked at Cisco but did not do a demo or work with a partner. We do not have any Cisco in house. From my own research, Cisco was too expensive and did not have a solution that was a single appliance that could do all of the things that Aruba can do. Their solution required firewalls, controllers, and routers to accomplish the same thing. This may no longer be the case.

What other advice do I have?

Get a good partner. Not just the local IT shop that has wireless experience. Not all wireless vendors are created equal. To get the real bang for the buck, you need an expert to help you decide what you want and to implement it.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user336468

Senior Systems/Network Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 26, 2015

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It improves security by helping us to centralize access controls and dot1x, but it would be nice to have the heatmap back in the controller.

Valuable Features

Integrated firewall, integrated WIDS/WIPS on the controllers and the ability to tunnel LAN traffic from the switches through the controllers to set consistent 802.1x and access controls that are consistent across both wired and wireless LANs.

Improvements to My Organization

It improves security by helping us to centralize access controls and dot1x and set common policy across both wired and wireless LANs without having to install additional components.

Room for Improvement

The controllers used to include heat map functionality. This was removed in a recent release. To get this functionality now, you need to be using Airwave (AWMS), which adds additional cost. On the other hand, Airwave can be used to manage a multi-vendor environment, so there may be some other benefits to having it deployed, but it would be nice to have the heat map back in the controller.

Use of Solution

I've been using it for five years.

Deployment Issues

No issues encountered.

Stability Issues

No issues encountered.

Scalability Issues

No issues encountered.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

It's excellent.

Technical Support:

It's excellent.

Initial Setup

Default settings are sufficient to get a functioning wireless network up and running fairly easily. Complexity increases add vLANs, security policy, dot1x, redundancy, etc.

Implementation Team

At my previous employer we had a relatively large wireless installation so we worked with a vendor team. The network at my current employer is small enough that I could handle it myself.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

Licensing has improved. In the past all redundant controllers required licenses for all the access points. They've not implemented a centralized licensing model so that you only need to license your access points once.

Other Advice

I'd recommend you do the training.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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it_user339819

Founder and Principal Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 26, 2015

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They let their customers deploy a wireless network and manage and secure it better than others, but they need to create a better unified story with HP switching.

Valuable Features

The most valuable aspects are its security and analytical capabilities.

I think when it comes to wireless the industry has changed a lot. When it comes to wireless, the industry has changed a lot and with connectivity everyone uses the same chips and really the same hardware so the quality of radio is very similar for every vendor.

Aruba have put a lot of emphasis on manageability and security, and I think their Airwave and Clearpath products are head and shoulders the best in the industry. They let their customers deploy a wireless network and manage and secure it better than you can do with all other solutions.

Room for Improvement

The next step is to create better unified story with HP switching. They're part of the same competitor, and their main competitor, Cisco, has a great unified wired/wireless story, and Aruba need to focus on this. They have great management tools and security capabilities, and they need to extend that to the wireless network.
Also, they need to enable the data they collect to be used by more companies. If you think of where wireless is big - schools, hospitals, retail environments - it would be good to capture that data and share it with third-parties so they can enhance their customers' experience.

Stability Issues

It's amongst the best in the industry. It's used by lots of small companies but also by some of the largest companies in the world, and there's only a couple of vendors who can be multi-thousand user wireless deployments, and Aruba's one of them. They have a rock solid solution.

Scalability Issues

It's highly scalable, and I like the way they have orientated their portfolio. They have a configuration called 'Instant' where you don't actually need a controller, you can just start with a couple of access points and get it at relatively low cost. As you scale it out, you can add more access points, and one or two controllers, and manage it through the cloud. So almost any configuration the customer wants they can do, and as it gets larger, you can bring in the management tools. It's not like some solutions where you have to rip it out to go larger.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I think it's great. I've never heard a customer complain and they get you on the phone with an engineer quickly. Obviously it's very focused on wireless so you're not going to be calling them for a wide range of problems. For the solution, they're very good.

Initial Setup

It's easy to get going. You can take an access point out of the box and have it running in minutes.

Other Advice

It's been the tech leader in the wireless market for a long time, which is why HP paid so much for them. Using the product is very simple, and there are lots of features unique to them. If you're going to purchase it - and you will pay a premium so it will cost more - take advantage of the security features, management tools, and analytical features.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user273753

ICT Technician at The Godolphin School

Jul 23, 2015

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We are using older AP-61's that still work well, but it's beginning to show a few cracks as it ages and more devices simultaneously access the network.

Use of Solution:

This solution has been in place for close to 9 years.

Other Advice:

Even as the current system we are using is old and the AP's being used are AP-61's, it is still working well.

We have 64 AP's around the site and with more and more students bringing in their wireless devices, we are only now starting to see some cracks. These cracks are to be expected due to the age of the system, and I'm sure it wasn't designed to have more than 1,000-plus devices accessing the network at the same time.

So if the current and future Aruba systems are as good as the old, we should all be fine.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user273753ICT Technician at The Godolphin School

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Jul 22, 2015

Review about Aruba Wireless

it_user137469

Network Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 14, 2015

We needed a real stack environment, a high density switch & dual power supply.

Managing our data centre network was a challenge. It was designed 15 years ago, before the internet, and not very flexible. If the users had asked us to create a new system we might have had to say no because we didn’t have the space and the bandwidth.

With two networks – one for administration and one for students – to manage, we were certain the old data centre would not serve users’ needs into the future: it had no room for expansion. It was difficult to install new equipment because of the huge amount of cable. We needed a data centre to give us space and where it would be easy to add and remove equipment. The administration had become increasingly dependent on IT services for carrying out its duties. As e-administration capabilities expanded, ensuring delivery of the systems demanded by its seven independent departments was becoming even more crucial. Everything is done electronically today.

Our network supports more than 400 applications, ranging from internal systems for supporting healthcare for the elderly and handicapped to public-facing, self-service applications for the municipality’s 203,000 citizens.

We chose the HP 3800 switches for a number of reasons: we needed a real stack environment, it is a high density switch with 48 1 Gb ports and four 10 Gb ports, it has dual power supply for redundancy, and it has a lifetime warranty. The lifetime warranty is important to us. If a device breaks and is no longer available, HP provides a similar device – a newer version.

At the network’s edge are more than 1,000 devices in 800 different buildings, connected using HP 2600 Series Switches and HP 3500 Series Switches. HP 5400 Series Switches connect 30 backbone devices. HP ProCurve MultiService Mobility Access Points are installed throughout the network to give easy network access to laptops, tablets and smartphones.

We have been working with HP products for the past 15 years. We needed to do this installation quickly and working with products we trusted and knew inside out really helped. There was just no reason to start again with a new vendor. Network deployment took just six weeks. We have helped beta-test HP ProCurve Manager Plus for the past 5 years.

The whole design creates redundancy, it is a showcase of the right way to do it. The HP 3800 switches not only have the flexibility of a stackable form factor, they have 10 Gb expandability to support bandwidth-intensive applications, providing investment protection for future needs. The flexibility we have is a huge benefit. We now have a system that can cope with future demands and can create new systems demanded by the users. It is much more flexible when you have to add more equipment: we no longer have to pull new cables because they are already installed in the racks. You just have to add the new equipment, put the network connections into the network switches and it just runs the way it should.

When you have 10 Gb links it is easier to add extra VLANs and now we have the option to use 10 Gb everywhere – a huge difference to the 1 Gb links we had previously. The 10 Gb fibre is key to making our network design work. Currently we have 450 km of fibre installed across our municipality. It is now easier to find your way around the network, improving network monitoring significantly. The way it is structured now, monitoring is easier. All the racks are designed the same so it’s much easier to find your way around. All the devices have a unique naming structure and unique address, and all the ports on the switches are designed for a specific purpose – so you know where things are.

Even when a stackable switch is operated with other units, there is only ever a single management interface for the network administrator to deal with. This simplifies the setup and operation of the network. You only have to manage 1 switch for each stack, meaning I only have to manage 5 switches instead of the 24 I would have had to manage previously.

The system is more responsive for the users and we now have a system that can cope with future demands: now that we have the space and the bandwidth we need, we have the ability to create the new systems that the users want.

Disclosure: PeerSpot has made contact with the reviewer to validate that the person is a real user. The information in the posting is based upon a vendor-supplied case study, but the reviewer has confirmed the content's accuracy.

it_user212721

President at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Mar 24, 2015

Cisco vs. Aruba Wireless Solutions

Cisco or Aruba Networks?

If you are considering wireless access solutions, this is a common question that you are probably asking. You probably have sales people knocking at your door. How do you make sense of all the stories that you are presented with. If you have done any research, you are aware that Cisco and Aruba are the two top names in the wireless access space. This brief posting should give you some insight.

Cisco

Cisco is the undisputed leader in the wireless access market, according to Gartner Research. This leadership number is comprised of four different product lines that are a result of four product acquisitions. Thus, when you are evaluating Cisco, the question is, which product line? When a company has this many product lines, it makes the upgrade path confusing, since there are incompatibilities. There is also the question of which products may eventually be dropped. These product lines are not consistent with user interfaces, policy enforcement, RF patterns, etc. For instance, Cisco ISE won’t work with Cisco Meraki. Cisco 3602 and 3702 high density access points will not work with Meraki. And Meraki will not work with the other Cisco access solutions. With all these development teams working on the same but different products, something needs to change at some point. But we can’t advise you on that.

Meraki has an excellent sales strategy of providing free access points to try. Their online provisioning and user interface are quite appealing. This often results in companies making decisions without properly weighing all the options…including their long term requirements. Careful, unemotional evaluation is vital for any major wireless infrastructure investment.

Aruba Networks

Aruba Networks is the number two wireless access provider on a revenue basis. They are focused on the wireless access business and with such focus, all their products are interoperable. This gives customers a great deal of flexibility with little risk of being trapped in a solution that has little future upgrade potential. Aruba is very strong when it comes to client roaming within a facility or its grounds using Aruba Client Match.

Aruba also operates in a multi-vendor wireless environment. Aruba ClearPass and AirWave are widely used by Cisco customers, since the Aruba functionality outperforms Cisco.

Aruba’s Instant Access Points provide one-touch provisioning of a wireless network. Once one AP is configured with a web interface, every other AP connected to the network is automatically provisioned. Aruba also has a cloud management solution to reduce the capital investment cost for a sophisticated wireless solutions.

So if you are considering Cisco vs Aruba, be sure to do your homework and dig deep. Keep emotion and show out of your decision process.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user375078Senior Network Engineer/Mobility Specialist at CCSI - Contemporary Computer Services, Inc.

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Jan 25, 2016

Great assessment!

it_user201984

IT Specialist at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

Feb 27, 2015

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Allowed us to have one controller at our central location and still provide wireless to our outlying clinics.

What is most valuable?

The main reason I chose to implement the HP WLC was due to the limitations of our previous Sonicwall WLC not being able to have layer three provisioning. I would say that feature is the most valuable.

How has it helped my organization?

With our old wireless network, we had to put controllers at every location to have wireless access. This product allowed us to have one controller at our central location and still provide wireless to our outlying clinics.

What needs improvement?

The user interface on the product isn’t terribly intuitive in some areas, especially when setting up VSC’s.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using HP MSM 720 Mobility Controller and 40 HP since April 2014, so approximately 10 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I experienced a few issues while deploying the controller. Getting the product to work correctly with a back end RADIUS server proved to be a bit of a task and the lack of documentation didn’t help either.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability wise the product has been fairly rock solid. I can’t think of any time I have had to even reboot it since I implemented it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The particular model (MSM 720) doesn’t provide much in terms of scalability. It only allows for 40 Access Points which my company has about that number.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service on the phone I would rate fairly poorly. On more than one occasion I could not understand the agent or would get disconnected, however, online customer service is much better.

Technical Support:

I have only used the HP forums for technical support and it has a pretty good following and a lot of knowledgeable users.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used a Sonicwall NSA3500 for all our needs. We switched due to the lack of Layer three provisioning at the time plus I wasn’t a fan of one device controlling so many aspects of our network and security.

How was the initial setup?

I would say complex, mainly due to the lack of good documentation. All together, it took me about a week to fully get the product in a production state. Coming from a Cisco background it seemed much more cumbersome than their products.

What about the implementation team?

We used an in house team (me).

What was our ROI?

I am not sure of the ROI at the moment. It has not been implemented long enough for any significant ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Original setup cost for this implementation was around $30,000. Day-to-day the product costs nothing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Any time we have a project we must have three viable options to choose from. We looked at HP, Cisco and Meru.

What other advice do I have?

Have a strong knowledge of your internal network
Study the manual as much as possible
Focus on VSC’s and Vlan configuration
If you come from a Cisco background keep in mind you won’t use an access port on the switch port connected to the AP like you would in a Cisco WLC setup, but instead either a trunk or tagged port

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user148020

Executive Director Ops and Infra at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 22, 2015

We needed the ability to be flexible or add capacity when necessary.

To support the success of every student, we leverage Oracle business intelligence tools for predictive modeling to identify when counseling intervention is needed. We need the capacity to run demanding applications, the uptime to operate around the clock, and the agility to react quickly to changing demands. HP and Columbus State University has a long standing relationship that started in 1995. HP account team, VAR partners nurtured that collaboration with CSU in to a successful partnership to lay a solid infrastructure foundation to position the university to transform to a global university.

To meet these goals, we virtualized our data center running VMware software on HP Converged Infrastructure. HP was a natural choice. We had relied on HP servers, networking, and storage for more than a decade. We also use HP Z Workstations in our computer labs, HP notebooks for faculty and staff, and HP printers around campus. We keep abreast of other vendor technologies, but we’ve always had a good relationship with HP. HP integrates well with the VMware platform—and when we upgraded and consolidated our servers, HP was a fantastic guide. We used HP Technology Consulting Services to design a new high performance, energy efficient data center. We consolidated from approximately 200 physical servers down to an eight-blade HP BladeSystem infrastructure that requires less electricity and cooling, and that even reduced footprint enough to allow us to rent out freed floor space. HP consultants came in and worked with us on the design of our revamped data center, all the way from security to redundancy, including air conditioning systems, fiber coming in and out, and generator systems with backups.

At the heart of our data center is the HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure that provides all the power, cooling, and I/O infrastructure needed to support modular server, interconnect, and storage components. I’ve always been impressed by the modularity of HP equipment. You can tailor it to specific needs to be more flexible and to save money. You can add capacity when you need it. Our enclosure houses eight production blade servers. We use HP ProLiant BL685c Server Blades to house most of its test and production virtual machines. A blade is a self-contained server that contains only the core processing elements, making it hot-swappable. For additional storage, blades can connect to another storage blade or to a network attached SAN. We run our test and non-production systems on HP ProLiant DL385 Servers.

The HP StoreVirtual P4500 Storage System gives us a virtualized pool of storage resources to deliver enterprise SAN functionality. You have storage but also brains behind it. You have multiple interconnected servers. The data that gets written out to that storage is spread across all the different servers and disk drives. That gives us two main advantages. One is redundancy, so that if a drive or even an entire storage node goes down, we don’t lose data, and the end user never knows it happened. Two, if you’re writing to or reading from multiple disks, you can store and retrieve data much faster. You spread out the hardware load and the risk across multiple nodes of storage, all acting as one.

We used HP LeftHand SAN/ iQ software to provision and manage storage, and thanks to tight integration between HP and VMware, envision being able to monitor and manage the environment from a central VMware vSphere platform.

HP Networking switches deliver high quality networking services with the modular
ability to add capacity. The HP Networking Lifetime Warranty delivers next-business-day replacement, with phone and email support. One of the reasons HP has a leg up on the competition is its lifetime warranty and maintenance. With some vendors, you have to buy maintenance agreements every year, and that gets expensive. HP Network Management software enables network firmware updates, notifications, and alerts, with single-pane-of- glass control. Recently, we started talking to HP about HP Software-defined Networking (SDN), providing an end-to-end solution to automate the network from data center to campus. We’ll be able to virtualize network components for redundancy, performance and high availability—have multiple physically separate network components act as one unit, so that if switch A goes down switch B takes over for it.

Server provisioning in the virtualized environment takes 30 minutes, compared to 30 days to provision a new physical server. That enables us to quickly adapt our network and systems to accommodate increasing traffic, new services, and demanding applications. Faculty today increasingly run “upside down” classrooms, providing lecture content in multimedia formats to be viewed beforehand, with class time spent working collaboratively in small workgroups. They also expect the latest educational applications to be available quickly in computer labs. In the past, it took a substantial amount of time for our staff to reimage computer lab devices; now the task is quickly accomplished, and we are even able to give end users some self-service access to machines and their functionality. The next step will be to leverage VMware for a more cloudlike, IT-as-a-Service environment in which staff can provision their own resources without calling on our IT department. Our HP CI foundation absolutely will support this evolution.

Another thing the infrastructure now supports is the predictive analytics we employ to trigger counseling intervention for students in need. We use Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition(OBIEE); Oracle Data Integrator (ODI); and Oracle Endeca Information Discovery to analyze unstructured data, such as that generated by social media, to detect when a student might be encountering academic, social, or financial difficulties. We have a goal and responsibility to reach out, intercede, and support students as soon as they are having difficulties. Those things would not have been possible in the old environment; it couldn’t have handled the bandwidth or processing. But successful universities of the future will have to do all this.