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Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Steelhead comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Pl...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (7th), WAN Edge (7th)
Steelhead
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (3rd), WAN Edge (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Suraj Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, efficient, and responsive support
Silver Peak VX is used for WAN optimization The most valuable features of Silver Peak VX is the flexibility, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Additionally, the long-distance performance of the application storage is easy and effective. This solution is suitable for small to medium-sized…
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency & bandwidth saving, best layer 7 QoS shaping policy can be achieved with ease
There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international MPLS. Additionally, functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP for branches and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency along with really good QoS for bandwidth shaping.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The most valuable features of Silver Peak VX are we can register our customers and they can receive free training and all the solutions features."
"First and foremost, it enables the customer to deploy high availability connections. This kind of solution enables them to deploy these HA connections for policies mostly automatically. It's a more automated approach than with other vendors."
"At the moment, for us, it is a very good solution because it has all the features we need and it is not so expensive."
"The platform is valuable for bandwidth reduction."
"I really love the auto-tunnel creation feature."
"Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect has high availability."
"The file and data reduction capabilities are very good. Without it, we have a great deal of network congestion."
"The tool is easy to configure due to the existing pre-configured templates. It is easy to manage compared to legacy systems, which takes time. We can complete a site within 30 minutes. The tool's best feature is outdoor onboarding. You need to bring the box to the site with the internet. It is a simple plug-and-play. The solution offers a zero-touch procedure."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"Steelhead has drastically improved user experience."
"One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"Their WAN optimization in terms of wireless connectivity doesn't have a very good cellular capability."
"The security can be improved, with the firewall for example, because they supply a basic one but not a UTM."
"This solution is suitable for small to medium-sized companies. If we have large-sized companies it is better to use Cisco or Palo Alto."
"We would like to have better features for path selection. For example, if we know the network is going to go down then we would like to set up an alternate route for data packets in real-time."
"If compared with Cisco, then Aruba's pricing is very aggressive."
"Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform needs to improve integrations with other vendors."
"They have to implement more security with it. The security, mainly their firewall functions, have to be included in the firewall features."
"The support from Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect has declined since Aruba acquired them. The knowledge and speed of the agents could improve."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"We are using the free version."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The license could improve for Silver Peak VX."
"The license for Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect is paid annually."
"The pricing for this product is good."
"You have to negotiate when it comes to pricing and licensing."
"The price of Silver Peak VX is reasonable but could improve."
"The licensing would be cheap if we compare it with the others, like Cisco."
"You can get both yearly and monthly options in licensing. It is not expensive."
"The price of Silver Peak VX is expensive compared to competitors. There are licenses, renewals, and support that need to be paid."
"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."
"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Silver Peak NX?
The tool's most valuable feature is bandwidth optimization.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silver Peak NX?
Compared to other solutions, I think it is a cheap product in the market. I think the pricing is good. I wish we had ...
What needs improvement with Silver Peak NX?
I haven't had a problem using the product since day one. As a matter of fact, I got it up and running by just reading...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitorin...
What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?
One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize ou...
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
We use Riverbed Steelhead devices for WAN optimization, which saves us considerable money on our international bandwi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Silver Peak NX, Silver Peak VX, Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Group Dekko, Kingston Technology, American Student Assistance, Ares Management, Charlotte Metro Credit Union, Colonial Savings, Community Bank, Denali Credit Union, Bed Bath & Beyond, Breweries of Cameroon, Carnival Australia, Coastal Beverages, Toshiba Electronics, Tru Blu Beverages, WAXIE Sanitary Supply, Charleston Area Medical Center, Community Health Plan, Healthcare Company, Mercy Health, Linklaters, Miles & Stockbridge, Thomson Snell & Passmore
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.