Aruba Wireless Reviews

As a network engineer, the feature that I value with Aruba is the management of the devices, like the one-touch provisioning of a wireless network.

Aruba Access Points are like plug-and-play devices that you just turn on and leave there and will automatically speak with its controller! It just makes the network administrator's work easier.

I worked on getting the root cause of multiple alarms of wireless access points in our management platform and found it to be caused by a software bug of the current version in the wireless controller. While doing this task, I found that the TAC support people I worked with have limited knowledge or comprehension of the what's going on as I was passed around to other engineers a few times.

I used to troubleshoot these devices for six years.

Due to the software bug I encountered (forgot the version), it appeared like that multiple access points were unstable, software speaking, but were not down physically.

Just slightly above the middle rating because not all technical support have the same caliber of troubleshooting an issue.

I also worked with the Cisco wireless solution as I manage several enterprise networks that use different solutions. I would say that managing Aruba products is easier than Cisco.

For a person who has been brought up with Cisco devices, I could say it was complex when I started working in Aruba's CLI.

We just used the cheat sheets we have in our SharePoint, following what the previous engineers did when setting up.

From a person who tried managing multiple wireless device platforms, there were little to no incidents that we receive for Aruba devices for a specific period of time. Though the biggest contender of this product line has been setup to majority of our customers, it appeared that Aruba devices are more stable.

It's very adaptable from the access point line. We've found that ClearPass products have met our performance marks to the letter. They sold us on foundations stats and provided us with everything we asked for. They didn't come up short and were dead on the money.

It's provided our students with such reliable service that they just expect it to be there and take it for granted. They come to school, blackboard their work, get on YouTube, chat with friends, etc., and then go home, not realizing that they used the college network. We've been able to give them the best experience possible, and their feedback has been amazing. If there are ever any hiccups, the complaints and tickets pile up very quickly.

Our users, for the most part, haven't noticed hiccups because of the HA capability and the speed at which the controllers can authenticate. In fact, the last couple updates have boosted the quality and redundancy. Students have been able to watch YouTube videos without any noticeable rendering issues during hiccups.

We have a few IAP's and that's sort of like the standalone home router stuff. They're lacking in functionality, and though they are designed for standalone small deployments, they don't give you the good standalone fun stuff that you expect on a smaller scale router, like good DLNA. I wish they were a little bit more progressive on their IAP line.

Before HP bought Aruba, the release dates for codes were very predictable and quick. Code release were always visibly available. But since HP's acquisition, normal and quarterly release dates have been delayed, probably because of continued integration between the two companies. One specific issues is that we want to deploy their latest and greatest AP, but they don't have a GA code version available yet. We're still waiting.

I know that's a very specific complaint, but it actually has impacted us because we keep a flush on the older access points on hand just in the event code gets delayed by a few weeks. It's now been delayed by a month to two and I have to buy older access points. I can't deploy the latest and greatest.

I'm hoping things get smoothed out when they start getting their product lines and their flow of products and code deployments get fixed. I've been a little disappointed in that.

Also, I've found some of their onboarding stuff to be overkill and not worth the price. Their base stuff that's included in ClearPass is absolutely amazing, but the fringe things are superfluous and overcharged. The core stuff, though, is exactly what you pay for.

We're essentially an Aruba shop. We have uniform wireless AP's ranging from AP 125's, which are slowly going to be de-commissioned on our next product cycle, all the way up to AP 325's in our fleet. We have three 7240 controllers, and one 7210 controller as our test platform box that we use for benchmarking and a few other projects. They're basically fully-licensed and we are basically all-wireless. We do not have any HP switching gear in-house or Aruba switching gear. All of this is controllers and access points for the hardware side. For the software side, we have AirWave, which monitors our entire wireless fleet in controllers, and ClearPass. We have three ClearPass appliances -- one is a hardware box and another is a VM box. Both of them are 25K units and one 5K unit appliance, as well as hardware.

We've been using them for about 10 years I would say, maybe nine years.

It deploys extremely quickly.

The controller is a rock solid 10 out of 10, the access points are 9.5 out of 10, ClearPass is 10 out of 10, and AirWave is 9 out of 10.

It scales incredibly well. We did have some scalability issues with the system a long time ago, but they fixed that rather quickly. We also changed product lines at around that time. We were outgrowing the product a little bit too quickly, but since we've moved to the new controllers, it's been rock solid.

Technical support is very good, but it's dependent on the engineer you get. Sometimes you'll get a fantastic engineer and your problem is solved right away. Sometimes you might have to jump through a few more hoops. Sometimes you get the Cisco experience where you must follow the bouncing ball and complete all the 10 questions. You know how your product works, you don't need to complete 10 questions. You have a problem and want an engineer who can solve this really quickly.

I've noticed that it's been getting better over time. It used to be bad about four years ago. Over the last two to three years, it's been getting a lot better. As long as you fill out the surveys, I tend to find that the service has been getting better and better and better. You get your resolution pretty quickly. So I'm generally quite happy with the tech calls.

I've noticed they've scaled back a little bit of their SE's. I guess that's because they're such a big company.

The initial setup tends to be both straightforward and complex. Although I haven't done an initial setup in a while, everything just clicks together very well. When I did do an initial setup, the wireless controller was up and running within a few minutes. Deploying new controllers into the cluster takes seconds. There are a lot of wizards and guides built into the controllers for setup. So it's very easy.

ClearPass is a little harder, and AirWave is medium difficulty. ClearPass is the hardest part to get going without a good amount of training.

Day-to-day costs are generally very low. We have very few problems with the system, so our maintenance costs and hours that we put into solving problems is generally very low, which makes my life really easy to work on other issues that come up. Our wireless system generally doesn't generate a lot of day-to-day issues.

Initial costs for purchasing the system? It's on par with other vendors, but is a little bit cheaper than the equivalent of what we were getting out there, so I feel that we got really good value.

Make sure you buy the system that suits your network. They have a very broad pallet, so you can buy one that's overkill and buy one that's underkill. Make sure you spec and follow the guides appropriately. Also, you have to have a very good concept of how fast you're going to grow and how much you're going to grow because if you don't have a really good idea of what your growth curve is going to look like, you can easily buy something that doesn't fit perfectly.

Proper planning for scaling, and knowing what your growth curve is going to be is key. Work with the SE's on figuring out the plan is very important. Aruba has a very broad product line on scalability, so that can hurt you and help you at the same time. It is very nice to have.

I'm using Aruba Wireless for enterprise deployment that's more centralized.

What I like most about Aruba Wireless is its stability, functionality, and performance.

What needs improvement in Aruba Wireless is its access point, in particular, it should have more flexibility. Aruba Wireless has Campus AP, Instant AP, and Unified AP, but it would be better if the product has a generic access point that you can manage over the cloud, on-premise, etc.

Another area for improvement in Aruba Wireless is scalability.

In terms of what additional features I'd like to see in the product, I'm unsure if it's already on the roadmap, but if possible, it would be good to have an SD-WAN functionality on the AP in Aruba Wireless.

I have years of experience with Aruba Wireless.

Aruba Wireless has great stability, especially because it's from Aruba, a brand known for its stability and performance.

In general, the scalability of Aruba Wireless needs some improvement. The product needs to be more flexible in terms of scalability.

I would rate the technical support for Aruba Wireless as five out of five. It's quite impressive, though it's not perfect.

I compared Aruba Wireless with other solutions, and I found it to be a complete product. It's ahead of the competition, so I chose to work with it.

The initial setup for Aruba Wireless is straightforward. There's nothing complex about it.

The price of Aruba Wireless is higher than other products, but you'll get stability, performance, and functionality out of it.

On a scale of one to five, I'm rating the price of Aruba Wireless a three.

I'm working with Aruba Wireless.

My company has a partnership with Aruba.

My company is a technology provider, so it's not an enterprise user of Aruba Wireless.

I have experience with both the on-premise and cloud versions of the product.

I would recommend Aruba Wireless for enterprise customers. The product applies to multiple verticals.

Overall, my rating for Aruba Wireless is eight out of ten, and it's a product that I would recommend to others.

We primarily use the solution due to the fact that the architecture is suitable for management and engineers.

The user interface is great.

We have found the pricing to be reasonable. 

Technical support is pretty good.

It's very easy to set up the solution. 

The certification for licensing could be better.

I've been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. While we have noticed many bugs in other offerings, Aruba has been issue-free. The performance is good.

The solution can scale if you need it to. It's not a problem. 

We have 20,000 people, including network engineers, using the product in our organization. Right now, we do not have plans to increase usage.

I've used technical support in the past and find them to be helpful and responsive. They are better than, for example, Cisco, when it comes to assisting us.

We also use Cisco. We find Aruba's technical support is better.

I've been a part of the implementation process and found it to be quite straightforward and simple. It's not an overly complex or difficult process at all. 

We can have it deployed in an hour. It's pretty quick to get everything up and running.

We are able to handle the implementation process ourselves.

It's not an overly expensive solution. However, I cannot speak to the overall costs involved in buying or operating the product. I don't handle the licensing aspects. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. We've been fairly happy with its capabilities. 

We are using Aruba Wireless to connect our internal network.

The user interface could be improved in Aruba Wireless. This would make the setup easier.

I have been using Aruba Wireless for approximately three years.

Aruba Wireless is a stable solution.

We have approximately 200 people using this solution in my organization.

I have used the support from Aruba Wireless.

I rate the support from Aruba Wireless a four out of five.

I was previously using Cisco small business. We switched to Aruba Wireless because the capacity was better and was more stable. I wanted to switch to SQL Enterprise but the price was very high compared to Aruba Wireless.

Aruba Wireless has been straightforward to set up.

I rate the initial setup of Aruba Wireless a four out of five.

I have received a return on investment while using Aruba Wireless.

The price of Aruba Wireless has a more competitive price than other solutions.

I rate the price of Aruba Wireless a four of five.

I rate Aruba Wireless an eight out of ten. 

The primary use of this system was to provide the best possible WiFi experience for students, faculty, staff, and guests of our campus. We had 88 APs throughout 14 buildings on campus. During the academic year, we could have hundreds of users connected to the APs at any given time. 

Compared to what we previously used to have, this product has enabled us to have more devices connected to our WiFi network. 

The feature that I love the most is being able to broadcast different SSIDs with different protocol requirements. 

AP signal strength and price. I know this is a competitive market, but APs should not cost so much if they do not cover a large area. 

The system was very good, but we needed to upgrade in order to adapt for our needs, and doing so with Aruba would have been more expensive. 

No issues.

We used a network vendor to work with us whenever we had an issue, so they took care of everything for us. 

With our previous system, we had to delete users who had not connected to our WiFi for a period of time. With this system, we did not have to worry about that. 

We used Cisco and switched because of the price. In order for us to get what we needed from them, it would have been too costly. 

Initial setup was very straightforward. We set up the switches and APs, then took it from there. 

Besides paying for the APs, you need to pay a license each year for their use. Therefore, watch out for that and do the best you can to keep costs down.

I can't remember, but we probably did.

It is a great product if it has what you are looking for. 

There are a couple of valuable features of Aruba Wireless for us. First is ClearPass, which is an authentication product, and second is AirWave, which is a reporting function.

AirWave allows us to do different reporting on WiFi utilization at our different campuses so I can break down different areas of the college and find out how many users are using the network at any given time. I can find out the utilization of different access points, which allows me to do capacity management.

It needs the ability to perform mobility device management. They should have some kind of mobility device management built into the product.

You need to make sure that the controllers at the access points have the capacity to handle the additional licenses. Otherwise, buying additional licenses won't necessarily scale.

We're very happy with the Aruba. We've been using them for about the past five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

For the most part, stability is excellent.

All you need to do is buy licenses for the access points that you have on those campuses.

9/10. The customer service we get from our sales rep is excellent.

Technical support is always going to take more time. If there's any kind of issue it needs to be replicated, it needs to be taken away and examined certainly more than customer service.

We were using another vendor to provide WiFi capabilities. Although it didn't have any limitations, Aruba integrated better with our existing equipment.

It's very easily set up.

I don't know what the ROI is on this. It's difficult to value the experience that the students have and the staff have, so to put an actual number on that is going to be very difficult.

We looked at other vendors before deciding on Aruba.

Make sure you're fully aware of all the products around WiFi and capitalize on any ones that are out there that would help your specific environment.