Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches Reviews

We use the EX series for switching. We use both POE and the standard option. We mainly use 48 port ones because we have quite a large area to cover for networking. We use three or four VLANs on each. The models we use are the EX 2300 and 3300.

We use the Juniper SRX 3040s in a cluster configuration and we have five offices around the globe. And our main office is in Bristol and has two 3034s in the cluster configuration. We've also got a VPN between all the sites. Our other sites use SRX 3020s, which will allow a gigabit to pass through on the firewall.

Our company has about 150 people spread across five continents with multiple offices across the globe. There are four of us at the moment in my team that deal with the actual devices. 

Their web GUI interface needs to be a lot better, especially when compared to HP. The command line is good, but you have to know how to get around it. The GUI is clunky and very slow.  

HP switches, in comparison, are easier to use because you can either have it as an options menu or you can actually just do command line, which is brilliant. When using Juniper and trying to do configurations on the actual switch, some of my team don't know how to do the command line. 

This solution is quite expensive compared to HP. Their support is also costly. A 1900 HP broker of Switch comes with a lifetime warranty compared to an EX 2300 which only has a five-year warranty on it.

I have been using this solution for five and a half years. 

This is a stable solution. 

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10 for scalability.

In the past two years, I've only had to call Juniper twice. One was for a switch issue and one was for one of our SRXs. The support team were brilliant in helping us fix the issue both times. 

The initial setup is really straightforward. It is similar to a plug and play setup. We have an on-premise deployment.

We completed the deployment in-house. Sometimes we get a third party to purchase a unit for us if we can't purchase direct from Juniper. 

If compared to Cisco, this is a well priced solution. Compared to HP, it is a little bit overpriced. Overall, they are priced in the middle compared to competitors.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

It is very reliable, scalable and easy to configure.

The version we're using depends on the model. We use QFX a lot, including versions 5100, 5110, and 5120. For the 4300 and 4400 campus switches, we're running version 21.4.

The solution is deployed on-premises. Juniper doesn't support cloud. 

Juniper just bought an orchestration management platform called Abstract.
Abstract is all greenfield, meaning that it's designed to be built from the ground up. You can't incorporate it with the existing infrastructure.

We have over a million users. I work for AWS, so we do a lot of deployment in Juniper.

If you know Juniper syntax, it's simple to deploy, simple to set up, very cheap, and cost effective for an average network.

Juniper is really good when it comes to the MX router, like edge devices for service providers. The hardware is solid, and a lot of ISPs use MX routers. The SRX firewall is pretty good.

The campus switches and access switches are the most valuable and simple to deploy for Virtual Chassis. Other than that, I don't recommend QFX10000 or 5000.

If we're building a data center and have Juniper, we have hundreds of Juniper switches in a leaf and spine design architecture, and it's horrible. Sometimes after an upgrade, half of the even port can't be detected. They don't recognize third-party SFPs, and now they claim that they don't support that anymore. There are a lot of issues with the hardware and software.

Juniper needs to get their code up to par because it isn't stable enough for a  leaf and spine design.

If you have over 10,000 VMs or Mac addresses, it doesn't scale.

I would love Juniper to have more stable features, hardware, and code. We have so many tickets open with Juniper. The switch reboot doesn't detect the port.

About 80% of my problems aren't engineering problems, but are Juniper's problems. In comparison, Arista gives me 10% of the problems that Juniper gives me when it comes to hardware and software.

It's falling behind compared to Palo Alto because of its features. Juniper's campus switches and data center switches for the leaf and spine design for the overlay and underlay is horrible. I wouldn't recommend that anyone use Juniper fabric, because there are so many problems, issues, and features that aren't supported.

I have used Juniper ethernet switches for 20 years.

I would rate the stability as five out of ten.

I would rate the scalability as five out of ten.

If you exceed 10,000 or 15,000 Mac addresses, it becomes unscalable and the network becomes very slow. There are a lot of figures within the data center that Juniper hasn't come up to speed. Now, they claim that they don't support CRB anymore. They support symmetrical IRB, and they support dynamic BGP. 

I would rate technical support as five out of five.

Setup is easy.

For the QFX5000 Juniper switches, the price is about $10,000, but they would probably sell it for $1,000. Nobody can beat Juniper's pricing when it comes to switches. Juniper out-prices everybody, but they get you on the back end, maintenance, service port, and service contract.

It's $3-5 million a year just in service contracts, support maintenance, and service agreements to support Juniper features for thousands of switches. I don't see a good ROI on Juniper because a lot of time is spent on troubleshooting. With Arista, you buy $50,000 switches, but they're stable. They're pretty solid when it comes to the code and hardware.

I evaluated Cisco ACI and DNA.

I also evaluated Arista, but a certain company didn't want to go with it because they didn't have the budget. Arista isn't cost effective because it's very expensive.

I would rate Juniper as six out of ten.

It's not a bad product, but there are a lot of bad features, code, and hardware. Juniper does ethernet switching, but they also do campus switching and access switching. Those are very basic setups. They also do next generation data centers. You're supporting these compute nodes, storage, and DNS. The next generation data center fabric is horrible. I built a leaf and spine design in Juniper, but we can't get the MC-LAG to work properly, so we have to use ESI-LAG.

We can't use type five EVPN. We have to use type two EVPN. When you're dealing with internal routing like IBGP, it's very hard to troubleshoot. You can't use features like ASPAP, local preference, and other things like route maps and prefixes. You can't really do any of that because it's all internal.

I wouldn't recommend Juniper. If you want to implement it, then evaluate what you're trying to do. If you're doing a lot of campus switches and access switches, then it's fine. If you're doing a lot of policy-based, zero trust, and micro segmentation, and all these parameters are being driven by security, my advice is not to use it.

Many companies, especially trading companies, stock market companies, hedge funds, and banking companies all use Arista for their lower EC platforms, high speed, and high throughput. I build a lot of major corporations, so I see a lot of companies that do that.

We primarily use the solution for the core environment and not in the access environment.

It's got a very strong CLI and many good features, like ACLs and all those kinds of things. We can manage with CLI and we have pretty good experience with our security.

It's pretty good as compared to other vendors.

The solution is simple to implement. 

It's easy to use. 

The product is so-so. We are not very pleased with their performance. We are having some issues in managing their stack. We would like to have some advanced technology in stacking. They need to improve their stacking technologies.

We contacted the principal as well, to open a case. We couldn't find the solution. That's why we are looking for replacing these switches with some other brand.

We've been using the solution for more than five years. 

We've had some performance issues and found the solution not so stable. 

It's very reliable. It's very stable. However, sometimes we are having issues, like memory leakage. 

We have three people, including me, that work on the solution. We're administrators. 

It's scalable. However, we had some issues with stacking. That stacking cable is not properly connected with the chassis. We already informed them as well. They said plug in one cable and then your stacking will be completed. There is a bug in the stacking module, so I don't know when they will fix it. That's why we are thinking of replacing it.

Technical support has been very good. We are fine with them.

Positive

We are using different brands, including Fortinet, Cisco, and Juniper. I also have experience with HP and Aruba.

We are currently using Juniper switch EX4600, EX4300 and Fortinet switch 240 and 148, and some Fortinet 80 and FortiGate firewalls. 

The initial setup is very simple and very straightforward. Compared to other switches, it is not that difficult. 

For Juniper switches, we have only three hours of downtime. In a three-hour downtime, we successfully managed to handle everything. Even managing VLANs, and tagging the VLANs and LAGs. All the things were done in three hours and we had everything configured properly.

It's moderate, not very easy, not very difficult. The terminology is sometimes different. You are following their proprietary standards, EtherChannels, and you can say security channels as well. These are not related to other switching technologies. They have some other proprietary things you need to know about in order to implement it easily.

I'd rate the overall process a three or four out of five in terms of ease of deployment. 

We don't have to deal with maintenance. That's done on the vendor side when we have any issue, for example, the code is not working, the SFP is not working or we have issues from their upgrades. If a permission is required, we'd take action accordingly. We need to have a recommendation from the principal if we are going to upgrade the software. When that happens we require some support from the vendor side.

In our environment, we do not need support from any vendor, any principal. If we are stuck somewhere, then we will definitely contact or open a case with the principal. All the things will be managed by our engineers and ourselves.

I can't speak to the exact pricing. It's based on the dollar and prices are fluctuating all of the time. My understanding is that it is moderately priced for the market.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's pretty good. It's stable as well, however, with some functionalities and some terminologies, the standard is the same yet the terminology is different. For the EtherChannels, they have some different names. For the tunnel, they have some different names. If people are working with a Cisco-type environment, when they are switching from Cisco to Juniper, they feel pretty the command-line interface is pretty different.

We are doing a POC with different vendors to replace this solution. We are looking at Cisco, maybe HP, and maybe another brand. 

We are looking for a chassis-based modular switch that can handle ten gigs, one gig, and both the copper and SSP modules. There will be six to ten modules in it.

I'm an end-user.

We're currently using the latest version of the solution. It's around version 20.

We're looking to replace this solution due to performance issues and we are in coordination with other principals, like H3C and other switching manufacturers. We'll soon see what they can offer us.

We are the company integrators, who provide solutions to our customers. I don't have much knowledge in this regard since I started in the middle. I have a lot of experience in Huawei and Juniper. It's because the configuration is an easier process and the transport from Juniper is also easy. They are currently using all these products for various purposes in the network which includes connecting to servers and Wi-Fi points. 

We have multiple cases of the customers trying to upgrade their network from Cisco, Aruba and Huawei to Juniper. They do this basically because they want to modernise their network and have an increased capacity. This shift improves their functionality because the Juniper Ethernet switches are more advanced. We provide them with assistance to configure switches, access points and Wi-Fi. 

There are multiple areas of improvement in Juniper EX series switches. In terms of speed and pricing, while Juniper provides good quality services, some clients still find the price very high compared to other competitors. Also there is a need for certain features to be enhanced like clear our configuration process which will help to make Juniper switches more stronger. However, there are also multiple challenges including understanding and configuration of certain aspects difficult without assistance. Despite these kinds of challenges, there have been multiple solutions and huge potential of improvement in Juniper. 

I have been working with Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches for more than 10 years. 

Juniper switches are stable and reliable which makes it efficient for day to day operations. 

In terms of scalability they are scalable, especially in the context of Ukraine's growing Ethernet provider market. I have observed instances where customers easily scale up their network capacities with Juniper and this has proved to be very beneficial for them. 

I have opened a ticket once or twice and I think there are not many changes that I would like to address. They explain the problem and help to get the solution 

Positive

I would recommend everyone to use Juniper at the organisations. I would rate it 7 out of 10. 

Our use case is among the 10 largest Brazilian banks, with more than 6 million accounts and presence in all Brazilian states. The institution showed annual growth of 27.6%. Its main businesses include universal banking, savings, loans and mutual insurance. And Stoneground  has approved equipment from Juniper Networks to improve stability, and also to deliver the performance required to support guarantee high throughput and scalability, and ensure compatibility with new technologies

Juniper EX Series switches benefit our clients organizations by offering simplicity and efficiency in provisioning, deployment, and troubleshooting compared to competitors like Cisco and Dell.

It’s easy to set up and manage network fabrics, apply robust policies, cost-effectively scale, and troubleshoot needle-in-a-haystack problems, such as misconfigured VLANs and bad cables.

The Continuity of the road map promises many new features, I don't see a critical point to be improved, I see that the chosen path must be maintained

We have been sell and implemented Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches for two years

The platform is very stable in terms of consistency and reliability.

It is a very scalable product. I studied a few successful case studies, where they mentioned it efficiently managed around 3,000 access points in larger companies and networks.

The technical support services are satisfactory.

Positive

We are a solutions integrator company and we work with different manufacturers, we evaluate which solution is best for the client's intentions.

The complexity of the initial setup can vary depending on whether they are cloud-based or on-premise. The process for cloud deployment is faster than on-premise. It takes a few minutes to complete. We use the Zero-Touch deployment method. The executives have to connect the cables, and it is implemented automatically.

We don't require a specialist to assist us in configuration. We take help from our in-house tool for managing provisions and troubleshooting.

They offer a more competitive pricing structure compared to Cisco. They often come at around 20% lower cost than Cisco. However, in some regions, there might be even more budget-friendly options.

Our partnerships are carefully evaluated, the solutions were evaluated for their technical, commercial and innovative capabilities

I rate Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches a nine out of ten.

Juniper switches are smart and we have all the features that we want. You can rollback to the previous version if you make any mistake during configuration. This is not possible in Cisco. 

You need to make a few local configurations to work with the solution. We have faced issues with the tool's stability. 

I have been using the solution for ten years. 

I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. We have around 148 ports connected using the solution.

We manage the solution ourselves and do not require any support. 

You just need to copy and paste the template. We do not follow automatic configuration but copy it to the environment. However, the configuration commands are long compared to Cisco. It's not an issue since it is just copy and paste. You need one person to handle the product's deployment. 

The product's pricing is less and almost half of Cisco's. 

I would rate the tool a seven out of ten. 

Juniper EX Series is part of the Junos operating system and has a candidate configuration feature, which means changes are not immediately applied. It has a consistent command structure across all platforms and can handle both layer-three routing and layer-two switching. Additionally, the Junos OS offers virtualization options and support for multi-chassis and fabric switching. Overall, the Juniper EX Series is a versatile and powerful solution.

One potential drawback of the Juniper EX Series has been that those without experience using a command-line interface (CLI) may find it intimidating. However, Junos is working on improving this by offering tools, such as Juniper Mist with Wired Assurance and Apstra. Additionally, the graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved as it has been considered lackluster across the board in Junos.

I have used Juniper EX Series within the last 12 months.

I rate the stability of the Juniper EX Series a ten out of ten.

I have not seen a Juniper EX Series massive failure. If there is a failure, it's going to be in their hardware itself, such as burned-out power. However, the OS, it's highly stable. I have customers that have been running these switches for 12 years without turning them off.

Juniper EX Series is highly scalable as switches. They have a high capacity for virtualization, supporting up to 64 or 128 nodes on a virtual chassis with a 48-port switch. They are well-suited for fabric and top-of-rack setups and can scale up exponentially. They are great solutions for connecting data centers.

I rate the support from the Juniper EX Series a nine out of ten.

Positive

The setup process of the Juniper EX Series can be relatively simple if you have the Juniper Mist with Wired Assurance tool. However, if you do not have this tool, it may take some additional research and familiarity with the platform to properly configure it.

The setup process for the Juniper EX series is entirely done through the command-line interface, there is no user-friendly setup wizard available. The configuration requires running specific commands to get it to function.

The solution has a long lifespan and the upfront investment cost may be high, but the return on investment is worth it in the long run as it reduces the need for frequent upgrades to the infrastructure.

The initial cost of the solution can be expensive.

I would recommend this switch over any other switch on the market today.

I rate the Juniper EX Series a nine out of ten.

In terms of performance, Juniper switches have a more user-friendly interface and more features than Cisco products. However, in terms of commands, Cisco is simple to use, and the command line is easier to use.

The only issue that we have with Juniper Ethernet Switches is the firmware because it is not stable.

When the power goes out, it's possible that it has become corrupted, and we couldn't continue because the switches stopped working. As a result, Juniper products were affected. Also, the power circuits may become corrupted after five years. It is, however, stable in Cisco switches.

We think it's popular. We prefer to use Cisco CLI commands rather than Juniper CLI commands.

I have been working with Juniper Ethernet Switches for ten years.

The product's stability after five or six years is less than that of Cisco.

We have approximately 200 users in our company.

I don't choose products by name, but we develop the technical specifications, and any vendor who can meet the technical specifications will be accepted. The tender, financial, and commercial processes will begin, and we will come to an agreement on the list price.

Our developers are in another department.

Technical support is very good.

Several times during the warranty period, we requested support. The response was very fast, they came to support us the next day. However, we did not extend the warranty after the warranty period had expired.

We are also working with Cisco Switches. Cisco Switches are more stable in terms of hardware and firmware. rather than Juniper Switches.

We only use these switches, the EX200 and the 20. We didn't use any other products with Juniper.

Juniper's initial setup was completed in collaboration with a partner. This happened about ten years ago.

It is sufficient for one technical person to install the switches and another to configure them.

The partner completed the deployment in one day for about 13 switches, making it very simple.

After the configuration, the partner brought his technicians to mount the switches.

We had a leakage in the support process and decided to end the product's life in order to purchase a new product with support. We did not renew product support as a result.

Juniper products are very stable. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Juniper Ethernet Switches a nine out of ten.