Aruba ClearPass is used for managing and identifying users.
Network Engineer at General Authority OF ZAKAT & TAX
Helpful support, stable, and user-friendly GUI.
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Aruba ClearPass is its ease of use and the GUI is user-friendly."
- "We have had some issues with the installation of Aruba ClearPass."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Aruba ClearPass is its ease of use and the GUI is user-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Aruba ClearPass for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Aruba ClearPass is stable.
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Aruba ClearPass
November 2024
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Aruba ClearPass is good. We can add more users if we want.
We have two technical staff members using the solution.
How are customer service and support?
We have used the support from Aruba ClearPass and they have helped us with our issues.
I rate the support from Aruba ClearPass a five out of five.
How was the initial setup?
We have had some issues with the installation of Aruba ClearPass.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is a license to use Aruba ClearPass.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Aruba ClearPass to others.
I rate Aruba ClearPass a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Manager, Systems Technology at Ketraco
If you max out the endpoint devices that you want to manage, you upgrade the license and can get more scalability.
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup was straightforward."
- "I would like the area of managing wired technology to be improved. Wireless is very good but I'm still struggling a bit to do my end to end configurations in the wired technology area."
What is our primary use case?
1. To improve overall security by segmenting the Guest and Corporate Vlan.
2. To Manage BYOD in the organization.
3. To provide visbility on my corporate network using one management dashboard environment for the devices
How has it helped my organization?
Secure organization by completely segmenting the guest and corporate vlans SSID.
Less management and support effort on the management of BYOD.
Clear visibility on the LAN .
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features would be:
- Wireless segregation
- Bandwidth segmentation
- Prioritization
- BYOD management
- Overall visibility.
What needs improvement?
I would like the area of managing wired technology to be improved. Wireless is very good but I'm still struggling a bit to do my end to end configurations in the wired technology area.
The Virtual Machine for the Clearpass sometimes has issues with loosing the management IP
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is fine because it's batched upon endpoint devices, and licensing. If you max out the endpoint devices that you want to manage, you just upgrade the license and get more scalability. The core server is running on virtualization, so you can expand the resources for you to be able to grow your server needs.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used Cisco ISE. We switched because it was complex. Even the deployment was not straightforward. When I had Cisco ISE, it was still in the first version, 1.2. I heard people mention that version 2.2 is much more friendly, easy to deploy, and easy to use but I didn't get a chance to test that. I used Cisco ISE when it was what I would consider a very complex solution, difficult to install, and even understand. Even then, it was not meeting my requirements.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward and the deployment took almost a month.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Cisco ISE V1
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution a nine.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Aruba ClearPass
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Aruba ClearPass. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Consultant
Makes it easy to require robust user authentication for both wired and wireless endpoints
Pros and Cons
- "It makes it easy to require robust user authentication for both wired and wireless endpoints, including BYODs."
- "Access Tracker is invaluable for troubleshooting access control incidents and quickly getting to the root cause."
- "It should be clearer in the pre-sales stage that clear, documented, executive-supported InfoSec policy is the key to success."
What is our primary use case?
ClearPass is the best Network Access Control "Swiss army knife" out there right now. It can do 802.1x (WPA2-Enterprise) for WiFi and LAN. It also has one of the slickest guest captive portal experiences and workflows out there, along with an easy, drop-in BYOD application.
I have not had too much experience with OnGuard, the endpoint integrity feature, but it does that too. With all of the ClearPass integrations and RADIUS Change of Authorization (CoA), it is possible to login wired or wireless endpoints based on a variety of identity stores, then create and associate security policies, e.g., DACLs, based on a device.
Dynamically provision VLAN assignments, i.e., no more "color-coded ports", write Palo Alto Networks (PAN) NGFW policies that are associated with a specific user (rather than IP address), and quarantine or drop an endpoint off the network in an automated manner if an incident is detected.
All of this, naturally, comes with a lot of details in implementation, but my experience was, like all things InfoSec, implementing the controls is easy if you already have a clear, documented, executive-supported policy that you are using as the control to enforce. Otherwise, the control gets blamed for what is really a lack of clarity and leadership regarding the underlying business policy.
How has it helped my organization?
It makes it easy to require robust user authentication for both wired and wireless endpoints, including BYODs.
What is most valuable?
Access Tracker is definitely the feature that I use the most. It is invaluable for troubleshooting access control incidents and quickly getting to the root cause.
What needs improvement?
It should be clearer in the pre-sales stage that clear, documented, executive-supported InfoSec policy is the key to success.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior IT Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1-10 employees
Provide single access point and high availability at standard pricing
Pros and Cons
- "It provides a single access point and is highly available."
- "The period of firmware updates is very short."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for security.
What is most valuable?
It provides a single access point and is highly available.
What needs improvement?
The period of firmware updates is very short.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Aruba ClearPass for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It consists of one-time passwords, so you don't have many challenges.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 700-800 users, out of which 50 are concurrent.
I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy.
If you take a controller concerning the APN, that is a one-time setup. Once you set it up, it doesn't give you any problem going further. The one-time setup takes around four to eight hours.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Compared to other solutions, it has a standard price.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Sep 2, 2024
Flag as inappropriateSales Manager - GCC at Gerab System Solutions LLC
A budget-friendly NAC solution that provides quality and functionality to its users
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature, I would say, is the cost-effectiveness of the solution when compared to others."
- "I remember our technical team stating that the installation front of the solution was a bit difficult when compared to other solutions."
What is our primary use case?
Our clients use Aruba ClearPass since it is a NAC solution.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature, I would say, is the cost-effectiveness of the solution when compared to others.
What needs improvement?
Regarding the improvement needed in the solution, I remember our technical team stating that the installation front of the solution was a bit difficult when compared to other solutions. So, some of the other solutions, when compared to Aruba ClearPass, are more user-friendly to install.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Aruba ClearPass for almost five to six years. My company is a reseller of the solution. I am unsure about the version of the solution I am using since we also deal in other products.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution. I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. I rate the solution's scalability somewhere around seven to eight out of ten. Mostly, our organization deals with medium and enterprise-sized customers.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the solution's technical support team a seven out of ten. There are no issues with the support we are receiving. I will probably have to check with the engineers who have dealt with the technical support team. Since I have never heard a complaint against the support team, I would reconsider my decision over the rating provided by me previously and rate the technical support an eight.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I rate the solution's initial setup a six on a scale where one is difficult and ten is easy. There are some difficulties when installing the solution. For our company, installation is not difficult since we are system integrators who are well-versed in Aruba ClearPass. However, one of our customers told us that it is difficult to manage the installation part of the solution.
The solutions deployment was quick because our company is well-versed in deployment. So, it took around twenty to thirty days. Usually, four L3 engineers from our company are involved in the deployment process. For the maintenance and deployment of the solution, we have a lot of people in our organization. So, our company has around 28 engineers, and we serve around 120 customers in UAE. Specifically speaking, two network engineers are handling the maintenance part of the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is too expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten. So, the price could be lower. The solution has a yearly based licensing cost attached to it.
What other advice do I have?
I want to tell those planning to use the solution that it is a good solution where one needs to have a certain level of expertise to carry out the deployment phase. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Team leader technical support at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Provides integration options with a multitude of other vendors and Aruba applications
Pros and Cons
- "I like the integration options with a multitude of other vendors and Aruba applications."
- "The user interface could be more polished and modern. It would be useful to have more options for automation."
What is our primary use case?
I use this solution for securing company-wide logs.
I'm using the latest version. It's deployed on the public cloud. Microsoft Azure is the cloud provider.
Everyone in our organization uses this solution. It's about 300 people. There are four people who specifically operate the solution, do daily checks, check for errors, and help users who are having trouble with their login sessions.
What is most valuable?
I like that it's usable in both an on-premise and hybrid and cloud native environment. I like the integration options with a multitude of other vendors and Aruba applications.
What needs improvement?
The user interface could be more polished and modern. It would be useful to have more options for automation.
I would like to have more collaboration between different security platforms. For instance, the Fortinet portfolio, which we also use extensively.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for about one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. We did have some issues with under provisioning the underlying resources, so that needs to be taken into account. If you do, then it is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very high. You just need to add extra nodes. I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is only approached by our third party network service provider.
How was the initial setup?
Deployment took one day.
What about the implementation team?
Implementation was done through a third party. We outsourced the deployment to our network vendor.
Maintenance is also outsourced. For the application itself, maintenance takes about four hours a month. For the actual usage of the applications on a day-to-day basis, we do that ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Compared to the functionality, the pricing is very favorable. It's affordable and provides good value for the money.
I would rate the pricing as three out of ten.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other on-premises solutions, but they aren't very comparable to Aruba.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.
I would recommend Aruba ClearPass to others.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Head of IT at Hubtech
Has a good enforcement feature and a wonderful UI; scales well, stable, and has good technical support that responds fast
Pros and Cons
- "What I like most about Aruba ClearPass is that it has the best enforcement feature for the network. I also like its Guest Captive Portal and virtual security enforcement features, but the virtual security enforcement feature is still under testing by my company. Aruba ClearPass also has a wonderful UI which I find valuable."
- "An issue with Aruba ClearPass is the lack of information and poor community support. You can't find the material easily on the internet for any issues. For example, if you're looking for any configuration or exploring any issue, it's not easy to find information, and this is the problem with Aruba ClearPass. Access to helpful information and poor community support could be improved. Another area for improvement in Aruba ClearPass is that some of its advanced features aren't easy to find. For example, my team needed to apply Google single sign-on, but it wasn't easy to find. Aruba ClearPass is a big solution with a lot of capabilities, and it's a very advanced solution, so you need to either have some experience with it or undergo some training. Aruba ClearPass is a very good solution from the network perspective, but the issue is the poor support you get from the community. When you try using the solution, some areas aren't easy. When you search on YouTube, you'll find very few materials about Aruba ClearPass. It isn't like Cisco where you can find information from hundreds of websites, on YouTube, etc. This is bad for Aruba, so this area should be improved. Aruba has a training center, but the usual training offered is only for Aruba Wireless and Aruba Switches. If you have another solution, it's not easy to integrate it with Aruba ClearPass, so this is an area for improvement. You need to do some research to successfully integrate your solution with Aruba ClearPass. We integrated Aruba ClearPass with Ubiquiti WiFi, and it's working fine with no issues. My next project is to start integrating Aruba ClearPass with Cisco Switches. The solution is good, but on the website, there's no book and no video, and you can't find the material on Aruba ClearPass easily. This is one of the issues with Aruba."
What is our primary use case?
We're using Aruba ClearPass for policy management, security health check, and authorization, as well as assistive network by Active Directory or Google mail.
What is most valuable?
What I like most about Aruba ClearPass is that it has the best enforcement feature for the network. I also like its Guest Captive Portal and virtual security enforcement features, but the virtual security enforcement feature is still under testing by my company.
Aruba ClearPass also has a wonderful UI which I find valuable.
What needs improvement?
An issue with Aruba ClearPass is the lack of information and poor community support. You can't find the material easily on the internet for any issues. For example, if you're looking for any configuration or exploring any issue, it's not easy to find information, and this is the problem with Aruba ClearPass. Access to helpful information and poor community support could be improved.
Another area for improvement in Aruba ClearPass is that some of its advanced features aren't easy to find. For example, my team needed to apply Google single sign-on, but it wasn't easy to find. Aruba ClearPass is a big solution with a lot of capabilities, and it's a very advanced solution, so you need to either have some experience with it or undergo some training. Aruba ClearPass is a very good solution from the network perspective, but the issue is the poor support you get from the community. When you try using the solution, some areas aren't easy. When you search on YouTube, you'll find very few materials about Aruba ClearPass. It isn't like Cisco where you can find information from hundreds of websites, on YouTube, etc. This is bad for Aruba, so this area should be improved.
Aruba has a training center, but the usual training offered is only for Aruba Wireless and Aruba Switches. If you have another solution, it's not easy to integrate it with Aruba ClearPass, so this is an area for improvement. You need to do some research to successfully integrate your solution with Aruba ClearPass. We integrated Aruba ClearPass with Ubiquiti WiFi, and it's working fine with no issues. My next project is to start integrating Aruba ClearPass with Cisco Switches.
The solution is good, but on the website, there's no book and no video, and you can't find the material on Aruba ClearPass easily. This is one of the issues with Aruba.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have around one to two months of experience with Aruba ClearPass.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Aruba ClearPass is a very stable solution. My team didn't experience any hangs or any abnormal behavior from it. If you apply the required configuration, Aruba ClearPass works well. Stability is a good point in the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Aruba ClearPass scales well. It's a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support for Aruba ClearPass is good and responds very fast.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for Aruba ClearPass isn't complex, but you need the training to set it up.
The deployment for the solution is very easy, and you can install it within half an hour, but this is a NAC solution. In terms of configuration, it's not a switch configuration or an IT configuration. Aruba ClearPass has one thousand scenarios in our network, and the problem is that you need a lot of information, so its configuration isn't as straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment for Aruba ClearPass was done in-house. I took training classes from the Aruba training center. It was on-demand training.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing cost for Aruba ClearPass is a bit expensive. Its pricing could be better. The license costs around $125,000 for the perpetual license and support for one year. Aruba can give you a license with five thousand endpoint access and one thousand five hundred onboard licenses on one hundred endpoints and two controllers.
What other advice do I have?
My company is evaluating Aruba ClearPass right now. It isn't live, but it's under evaluation or testing currently.
I'm using version 6.10 of Aruba ClearPass.
My rating for Aruba ClearPass is nine out of ten.
Between ten to twenty people use Aruba ClearPass within the company. There's only a small amount of users of Aruba ClearPass currently because the solution is still under evaluation. Once Aruba ClearPass is live, my impression is that there would be no issues with it in terms of connectivity.
My advice to others looking into using Aruba ClearPass is to get good training from the Aruba virtual training center. The training costs extra. The on-demand training costs around $500. I also recommend doing the structured training, but that would cost around $3,000.
My company is a customer of Aruba.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Department at Telenor Comunicaciones
Versatile and stable solution
Pros and Cons
- "The aspect of Aruba ClearPass that I like most is that it has a lot of options, it is very versatile."
- "The initial setup was quite complex, it is not that easy."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case is for security.
What is most valuable?
The aspect of Aruba ClearPass that I like most is that it has a lot of options, it is very versatile.
What needs improvement?
One thing that could be improved in Aruba ClearPass is that we would like to have an option to recognize all the assets on the customer's site in one click. That is an easy way of recognizing all the assets on a customer site. We would like an easier way of recognizing the assets of the network so we could know in which VLAN we want to configure the port or the suite and which policies apply to that port. We'd like ClearPass do that automatically.
For how long have I used the solution?
We first installed ClearPass about two years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of stability, it is quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
One a scale of one to five, I would give the scalability a three. It is not scalable enough.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was quite complex, it is not that easy.
It took maybe two weeks. It takes a long time because it depends on the customer's industry or location or on the user's computers. It's not that fast normally.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Aruba ClearPass is expensive.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale of one to ten I would give Aruba ClearPass an eight.
It is a good solution for applying security to the network. I would recommend it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Aruba ClearPass Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
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It is flexible, has multivendor support and many features, but needs training to learn. The permanent licensing model is great. I'm giving Clearpass courses as a certified instructor and love this product.