I have not had any issues with Arista Networks Platform in terms of improvements. I would only advise that they should dive deeper into the Nigerian market and make it easily accessible.
AVP Enterprise Sales at Ashtech Infotech (India) Pvt.Ltd.
Real User
Top 5
Feb 21, 2025
Currently, Arista is too costly for its customers. Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements. However, we sometimes face challenges when integrating with proprietary protocols and solutions from other OEMs, like Cisco.
Arista Networks is currently less popular as they were initially more focused on data centers than campus networks. They should expand further into campus networks.
Support Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 10
Oct 23, 2024
In my opinion, the solution for network monitoring is quite expensive. More ACLs and traffic filtering make setups complex. I believe there could be improvements to make the initial configuration less prone to errors.
Consultant at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Aug 27, 2024
A lack of skills across multiple teams is a concern when it comes to Arista Networks Platform. Arista Networks Platform isn't one of the major players. Even though Arista's operating system looks very much like Cisco, it isn't so. A weakness would be that in our company, we don't have many people within our team who support the product because there are different vendors, and most of them are not tier-one vendors, so the skills required sometimes are just not there. With Cisco, everyone is certified by Cisco in the area of DC. There are some commands in the tool which I don't understand because I am a Cisco person. Everything that we need for it to do, it does quite well.
The solution should look at offering Power over Ethernet (PoE) for multiple different models in the future, as it is one area where the product currently lacks. The stability of the product is an area where certain improvements are required. The product is scalable. My company does face issues in terms of interoperability when it comes to the product, making it an area that needs to be fixed. There is a scope for improvement in the integration capabilities offered by the product, especially considering its ability to integrate with our company's existing infrastructure. In Arista Networks Platform, there are some issues when it comes to interoperability where it needs to improve.
In my view, Arista could enhance the Wide Area Network balancer and failover. While the failover is swift, less than five seconds, it tends to be overly sensitive, triggering unnecessary alarms and emails. A smoother transition between ISPs during failover would improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary notifications and interruptions.
Principal Network Architect at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Dec 6, 2022
Arista has done a pretty good job, but there's room for improvement. They should have a more stable code. Their code is a lot better than Juniper, but there are a lot of bugs, issues that arise and memory leaks.
Something that you will often hear about Arista products is that the price is a bit too high and, like with Cisco, we sometimes have problems with our customers because of its pricing. However, price-for-price I would say that Arista may still be better than Cisco, and I would even go so far as to say that Arista products are the number one solution in the world for data center networks. It is commonly accepted that Cisco switches are the perfect product for data center environments, but I believe that Arista switches are even superior. Almost all of our customers that use Arista products are happy to use them, with the only complaint being the price. Thus, if the price of Arista's products were the same as Cisco's product, it's possible that customers would actually prefer Cisco over Arista. When it comes to working with and setting up the Arista Networks Platform, things are not too difficult because the configuration is so similar to Cisco products and almost all of our network engineers have experience with Cisco. However, Arista lacks a comprehensive set of loopback commands as compared to Cisco. With Cisco devices, there are several loopback commands such as "ip bgp" which can be used to easily diagnose problems, but with Arista many of these commands are absent, making it so that troubleshooting and getting certain problems under control is more difficult in comparison with Cisco. It would be very helpful if Arista brought more loopback features to the CLI.
Technical Presales Engineer at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jun 7, 2022
I do prefer the Cisco interface. Cisco is not too user-friendly, however, in terms of the comments to deploy the configurations, to change or update configurations, Cisco is easy compared to Arista. We did at one point have a software bug. I remember that sometimes they used to make the physical connection and then everything was all right, however, the port, the physical port didn't come up. We needed to set the port down and then up again to work. We also had a problem when using the internet service providers that connected to Arista. When the internet was down and came up again, the suite couldn't recognize and keep the status as unavailable. The solution is a bit pricey.
An area for improvement we see in Arista Networks Platform is its integration, e.g. it needs to have more integration with its new products. It should have good integration with multiple wireless, security, and other products they recently acquired. Everybody needs just one dashboard, e.g. we are looking at where we can monitor all the other products which Arista Networks Platform has recently acquired. Incorporating more security and cloud in terms of the journey to digital transformation is also another area for improvement in Arista Networks Platform, because more and more companies would like to have the incorporation of both cloud and security into their firmware. An additional feature we'd like to see in the next release of Arista Networks Platform has everything to do with permissions. If you're looking at interfacing with other vendors, they need to have open protocols like API, so that it becomes easier for threat backing integration.
Cyber Security Consultant and Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Jul 28, 2021
The cost of Arista Networks Platform is high; it is more expensive than other networking solutions. Also, the community is good but is not good enough. It still needs to grow more. Maybe, if they had out-of-the-box NetFlow features to integrate with third party solutions, it will be good.
Head of Technical at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Reseller
Jan 23, 2021
The solution needs to improve their product range. They've added a few items, however, they're a bit of a johnny-come-lately to a lot of other competitors in the space and they need to compete for more for the attention of various sizes of business. They basically need to include more models in their offering. The one thing they lack is Microsegmentation solutions. In contrast, Cisco offers that. It has something called ACI, and we lose out on contracts due to the fact that Arista doesn't have a similar offering. Clients would like to have that on hand as when clients deal with the Cloud base, Microsoft segmentation can be managed with, in a sense, Analytics.
Vice President, Network Engineering at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Jan 22, 2021
There is a lot of room for improvement within the solution. Any product, however, can improve. No product is perfect. The solution needs to accommodate new features. I have personally made some recommendations in the past and hope to see this implemented in their product line. I think there is a need for improvement in the area of their VXLAN/EVPN capability but their current solution is great regardless but may be not very scalable for a global deployment.
CTO at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 12, 2020
Some new features are needed. Arista is technology-driven by themselves. At times they are limited by standards that are not formally closed. I would like to see more integration with one of the providers from each intent-based network for compliance documentation and IT security purposes. For future development of the product, being able to manage the security or relevant paths with intent-based networking is important. The intent-based network is a management that is on our security level. The intent-based networking management, together with the provider of these solutions that are already free, would be beneficial. I don't worry that there is a time gap between finalizing as triple E standards before integrating with the future release.
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Oct 31, 2019
The documentation for this solution needs to be improved. In the documentation, it is not easy to find the exact solution which describes the configuration step by step. It means that we've had to ask our supplier how to use certain features, and which commands to use. We can find a simple description on the website, as well as a list of the features, but a more complete description is not available. It is not clear exactly how to configure and use each of the features. For other vendors, we can find the exact configuration, with examples, that we need to deploy for any new features. The documentation did not explain that we could not vary the speed between ports that are in the same block. For example, we cannot have 1G and 10G on the neighboring ports. All four ports have to be 1G or 10G, which was very annoying for us when we realized that we needed to change the configuration and the cabling that we had already prepared. In the next release of this solution, we would like the option to use two switches as one virtual switch. The CVP management platform needs to be improved.
Arista Networks Platform is a stable and reliable solution for data center features, specifically for non-blocking switches used for spine-leaf connectivity with servers hooked to these switches. It also provides multi-layer switches for client networks, particularly in the banking sector.
Arista products are preferred for their stability, good hardware, ease of adoption and configuration, responsive and helpful support, and high throughput ratings. The solution has helped prevent...
I have not had any issues with Arista Networks Platform in terms of improvements. I would only advise that they should dive deeper into the Nigerian market and make it easily accessible.
I cannot think of any areas where Arista Networks Platform needs improvement at this time.
Currently, Arista is too costly for its customers. Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements. However, we sometimes face challenges when integrating with proprietary protocols and solutions from other OEMs, like Cisco.
Arista Networks is currently less popular as they were initially more focused on data centers than campus networks. They should expand further into campus networks.
In my opinion, the solution for network monitoring is quite expensive. More ACLs and traffic filtering make setups complex. I believe there could be improvements to make the initial configuration less prone to errors.
A lack of skills across multiple teams is a concern when it comes to Arista Networks Platform. Arista Networks Platform isn't one of the major players. Even though Arista's operating system looks very much like Cisco, it isn't so. A weakness would be that in our company, we don't have many people within our team who support the product because there are different vendors, and most of them are not tier-one vendors, so the skills required sometimes are just not there. With Cisco, everyone is certified by Cisco in the area of DC. There are some commands in the tool which I don't understand because I am a Cisco person. Everything that we need for it to do, it does quite well.
From VMware, I think the cost of the tools is very high. I think the cost of the tool may have a global impact.
The product fails to offer functions related to cloud orchestration, making it in areas where improvements are required.
The solution should look at offering Power over Ethernet (PoE) for multiple different models in the future, as it is one area where the product currently lacks. The stability of the product is an area where certain improvements are required. The product is scalable. My company does face issues in terms of interoperability when it comes to the product, making it an area that needs to be fixed. There is a scope for improvement in the integration capabilities offered by the product, especially considering its ability to integrate with our company's existing infrastructure. In Arista Networks Platform, there are some issues when it comes to interoperability where it needs to improve.
The solution’s pricing could be better.
In my view, Arista could enhance the Wide Area Network balancer and failover. While the failover is swift, less than five seconds, it tends to be overly sensitive, triggering unnecessary alarms and emails. A smoother transition between ISPs during failover would improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary notifications and interruptions.
I want the solution to include a unified controller.
Arista has done a pretty good job, but there's room for improvement. They should have a more stable code. Their code is a lot better than Juniper, but there are a lot of bugs, issues that arise and memory leaks.
Something that you will often hear about Arista products is that the price is a bit too high and, like with Cisco, we sometimes have problems with our customers because of its pricing. However, price-for-price I would say that Arista may still be better than Cisco, and I would even go so far as to say that Arista products are the number one solution in the world for data center networks. It is commonly accepted that Cisco switches are the perfect product for data center environments, but I believe that Arista switches are even superior. Almost all of our customers that use Arista products are happy to use them, with the only complaint being the price. Thus, if the price of Arista's products were the same as Cisco's product, it's possible that customers would actually prefer Cisco over Arista. When it comes to working with and setting up the Arista Networks Platform, things are not too difficult because the configuration is so similar to Cisco products and almost all of our network engineers have experience with Cisco. However, Arista lacks a comprehensive set of loopback commands as compared to Cisco. With Cisco devices, there are several loopback commands such as "ip bgp" which can be used to easily diagnose problems, but with Arista many of these commands are absent, making it so that troubleshooting and getting certain problems under control is more difficult in comparison with Cisco. It would be very helpful if Arista brought more loopback features to the CLI.
The stability of this solution needs to be improved as part of the next upgrade.
I do prefer the Cisco interface. Cisco is not too user-friendly, however, in terms of the comments to deploy the configurations, to change or update configurations, Cisco is easy compared to Arista. We did at one point have a software bug. I remember that sometimes they used to make the physical connection and then everything was all right, however, the port, the physical port didn't come up. We needed to set the port down and then up again to work. We also had a problem when using the internet service providers that connected to Arista. When the internet was down and came up again, the suite couldn't recognize and keep the status as unavailable. The solution is a bit pricey.
Arista Networks Platform should focus on improving the compatibility or integration with Cisco solutions.
The overall price of the Arista Networks Platform is expensive. It should be reduced.
An area for improvement we see in Arista Networks Platform is its integration, e.g. it needs to have more integration with its new products. It should have good integration with multiple wireless, security, and other products they recently acquired. Everybody needs just one dashboard, e.g. we are looking at where we can monitor all the other products which Arista Networks Platform has recently acquired. Incorporating more security and cloud in terms of the journey to digital transformation is also another area for improvement in Arista Networks Platform, because more and more companies would like to have the incorporation of both cloud and security into their firmware. An additional feature we'd like to see in the next release of Arista Networks Platform has everything to do with permissions. If you're looking at interfacing with other vendors, they need to have open protocols like API, so that it becomes easier for threat backing integration.
The solution is quite expensive. One of the negative aspects of it is the pricing.
The cost of Arista Networks Platform is high; it is more expensive than other networking solutions. Also, the community is good but is not good enough. It still needs to grow more. Maybe, if they had out-of-the-box NetFlow features to integrate with third party solutions, it will be good.
Its price can be better.
The solution needs to improve their product range. They've added a few items, however, they're a bit of a johnny-come-lately to a lot of other competitors in the space and they need to compete for more for the attention of various sizes of business. They basically need to include more models in their offering. The one thing they lack is Microsegmentation solutions. In contrast, Cisco offers that. It has something called ACI, and we lose out on contracts due to the fact that Arista doesn't have a similar offering. Clients would like to have that on hand as when clients deal with the Cloud base, Microsoft segmentation can be managed with, in a sense, Analytics.
There is a lot of room for improvement within the solution. Any product, however, can improve. No product is perfect. The solution needs to accommodate new features. I have personally made some recommendations in the past and hope to see this implemented in their product line. I think there is a need for improvement in the area of their VXLAN/EVPN capability but their current solution is great regardless but may be not very scalable for a global deployment.
Some new features are needed. Arista is technology-driven by themselves. At times they are limited by standards that are not formally closed. I would like to see more integration with one of the providers from each intent-based network for compliance documentation and IT security purposes. For future development of the product, being able to manage the security or relevant paths with intent-based networking is important. The intent-based network is a management that is on our security level. The intent-based networking management, together with the provider of these solutions that are already free, would be beneficial. I don't worry that there is a time gap between finalizing as triple E standards before integrating with the future release.
The documentation for this solution needs to be improved. In the documentation, it is not easy to find the exact solution which describes the configuration step by step. It means that we've had to ask our supplier how to use certain features, and which commands to use. We can find a simple description on the website, as well as a list of the features, but a more complete description is not available. It is not clear exactly how to configure and use each of the features. For other vendors, we can find the exact configuration, with examples, that we need to deploy for any new features. The documentation did not explain that we could not vary the speed between ports that are in the same block. For example, we cannot have 1G and 10G on the neighboring ports. All four ports have to be 1G or 10G, which was very annoying for us when we realized that we needed to change the configuration and the cabling that we had already prepared. In the next release of this solution, we would like the option to use two switches as one virtual switch. The CVP management platform needs to be improved.