Meraki MS Switches Reviews

I've got the appliances and I've got the switches and I've got the access points.

I have switches for the phones and the access points. I have standard switches for the network. However, I'm doing the layer-two switching. I don't do any additional programming on them. The advantage that I have with them is the user portal. I can find the endpoints by port. Therefore, if I need to control it, I can do it from the portal and shut a port down, however, I don't do any additional programming beyond layer two.

I like that I can patch and manage them remotely from the user portal. It's easy to patch and manage from anywhere.

The initial setup is easy.

I don't see any need for any improvements for my particular use case. 

They could lower the price.

At my latest company, we've used the solution for three years. However, I've worked with the product for seven years. 

In terms of stability. they're as good as any other switches I've used. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I don't know that you scale switches. You get them for whatever amount of ports they're on.

I have sites with 24 port switches and I have sites with 48 port switches. Their size is growing to meet the needs we have.

Before this, I had HP and Cisco and was actively buying HP switches. We switched, not that it is cheaper. I am required in our industry to always be on the current firmware. That would, in the past, require either working late hours or scheduling downtime to do those updates. Now I can schedule them for any time of the day in the off hours. It happens automatically. There wasn't much difference between any of the switches. 

It's a straightforward implementation. 

I just did plug-and-play.

I can maintain them from my desk. I'm a one-person shop. They are very easy to take care of.

For example, I can schedule patch management. The biggest concern is keeping them patched or updated so that the firmware is always current to avoid potential bad players or issues. I can schedule that and do that all from the console. I don't have to worry about staying up late at night to do it or taking it down in the middle of the day and scheduling downtime. In the middle of the night, I can say, "Patch it," and it'll be done.

The pricing is high and could be reduced. 

The initial cost is above HP and probably comparable to Cisco. HP, on their switches, still has a limited lifetime warranty. You buy it and you'll get support and replacement for the life of the switch. The maintenance on the Meraki is not that great. I buy it three years at a time. It's not a big number.

Visibility is part of the Meraki mindset or the culture. You manage your infrastructure from a single portal. I have visibility into what's going on from a single portal, and I can manage and update and maintain it from that single portal. I don't have to have multiple solutions. I don't have to log into the switches. Everything's managed from that single portal. It's great.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We are using the Meraki MS120, MS425, and MS355 switches. We currently have a mixed environment with Cisco switches as well as these Meraki switches. We're replacing them one by one to see how well they perform. So far, we have only configured the MS120, which are the eight-port switches. We have some poor equipment, so we are replacing the existing switches. There are fewer network ports that are required, so we've set up these first.  

 We haven't yet finished setting up the MS425. They're supposed to work as the core of our network, replacing the 38 switches that we have on the core. They haven't been configured on the network. We're still trying to just do tests and see if they will work. The MS355 are supposed to be on the distribution, so we haven't configured those, either.

These switches are not expensive and their configuration is very easy. You can provision them on the dashboard, then you just connect them to everything. It picks up from there. Management is easy.

I wouldn't say I'm in a position to talk about any improvements because I'm still learning. We're still on the learning curve, so we have not implemented a lot of the things that we can do with the other switches. But I'm sure that maybe during the course of the next month or two, we'll be able to replace enough of these switches to see how well they work.

We've only been using Meraki MS Switches for about a month or so.

So far, it's been very stable. They run with no issues.

It is scalable.

The initial setup is very easy. It's not complex at all. It's much easier than the Leader switches we've had to configure that required us to learn some commands and so forth. 

The pricing is good especially if you have a tight budget, and you want to implement these. But I guess some people would have some reservations about the yearly subscription.  Maybe they could offer an option of having a one-off or perpetual license to let people test it and see how it goes. 

And then I'm not sure about the compatibility with other models because I haven't tried them to see if they work with other switching models. But I do know that they work with Cisco. With other brands, I don't know.

I would rate it an 8.5 out of 10. 

My company currently has about a dozen switches in operation in multiple locations. We've got probably about four or five of them in our main headquarters, then we've also rolled out to individual sites to utilize them. We remove the Cisco router and go directly into what we currently have as an SD-WAN solution.

Updates are easier to administrate. Security is handled in real time updates.

Overall a great solution.

The most valuable features are the cloud and throughput visibility, the ease of configuration, and being able to implement them into our umbrella DNS solution.

As far as the downside, I would say that they're not data center ideal. They're definitely missing some of the higher end data center Cisco features, but I'm sure those are coming down the road. Probably the only other downside I see to these is that they're very limited in their GUI for the initial configuration. 

3 Years

So far, I have not seen any of the switches go down. 

I think the only downside that I've seen so far in the scalability of the product is that they don't have anything that's more than a 48-port switch. They're more useful as access switches than as core switches for large environments. I mean, you can stack them nicely, but I haven't seen anything like a blade switch. It's different from what we standardized on in the past, with the Cisco 6500 or the 4000 series blade switches.

The support has always been really good. 

This product is very straightforward. They're a little bit of a change from the standard Cisco gear, but if you understand the networking and how things work, they're pretty simple to set up.

We have the switches on the cloud, so we can centrally administer updates from the cloud pretty simply. It's nice in that respect because you don't have to have hands-on maintenance. 

Everybody would love for the pricing to be cheaper than it is, but I don't know if that's a legitimate ask.

It's $150 per year for licensing on each 250 switch. The 425 switches are about $500 a year for the enhanced enterprise licenses. 

My advice to those looking at implementing the product would be to understand how to get into the console before implementing the switches because, in a secure environment, they may not be able to call back initially without a little bit of configuration. However, if you have broadband with DHCP, it's simple to get the initial configuration downloaded.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. If they had a little bit more advanced features, I'd raise them up, but they're real good.

Meraki MS Switches have revolutionized our network operations. With cloud-based management, deployment is effortless, and monitoring is streamlined.

Meraki MS Switches have been invaluable in our network management. Compared to other switches, Meraki stands out with features like Power over Ethernet. This capability, along with remote manageability, has transformed our network operations, allowing us to implement changes quickly and efficiently while maintaining our organization's standards. It has been a refreshing change, making our tasks easier and more streamlined.

The most valuable features of Meraki MS Switches are their reliability and simplicity. Once they are plugged in, they just work without needing much maintenance. They are dependable in various environments, from office to field settings. With Meraki, you can trust that they will perform reliably, which has been my experience.

One area where Meraki MS switches could improve is offering smaller switch sizes for distribution switches, as not all networks require the standard 24 or 48 ports. Having more compact options with fewer ports would be beneficial, especially for distribution switches with only a few connections needed. This could help optimize space, power usage, and cost efficiency, particularly for networks with many end-user switches and few distribution switches.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for over a year.

I would rate the stability of the product as a ten out of ten. I have not faced any issues so far.

I would rate the scalability of Meraki MS Switches as a solid ten out of ten. We have approximately 20,000 end users at our company.

The technical support is excellent.

Before Meraki, we used a mix of Cisco and other brands. Then we switched exclusively to Cisco and eventually to Meraki.

I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. The deployment of Meraki MS switches typically takes a few days. We prepare parameters and schedule remote sessions with our network administrators. The actual session lasts about an hour, but the whole process involves coordination and preparation, including in-house support from an external company.

I would rate the costliness of Meraki MS Switches at around seven out of ten. They are not cheap, but I find them to be a good value for the money. However, I would prefer if the prices were a bit lower.

The analytics and dashboard functionalities of Meraki have greatly enhanced my network monitoring. While I primarily use it to monitor basic parameters like bandwidth and connectivity, it allows me to quickly spot potential issues and react promptly, despite overseeing a wide area.

In high-density environments, my experience with Meraki MS switches has been positive. They handle multiple wireless networks cohesively, including those for office and public use, without issues.

Overall, I would rate Meraki MS Switches as a nine out of ten.

We can build virtual stacking for the switches. It helps manage multiple switches deployed in different locations with a single console on the cloud. If we make any configuration changes, it can be changed across all the features using it.

It is a cloud-based product and depends on internet connectivity. It is not limited to specific geographical areas as well. So, we cannot provide these switches in the BFSI segment, especially the banking sector, as they have certain limitations due to regulatory guidelines. 

They could add NAS encryption protocol to the switches. Nowadays, many customers enquire about this feature.

We have been using Meraki MS Switches for almost eight years.

Stability-wise, I rate the product as a nine out of ten.

We have seven to eight customers for Meraki MS Switches from the manufacturing sector. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The product's technical support team needs to take ownership of the problems. There is always room for improvement.

Neutral

I am working with many product competitors like Ruckus, HP, Juniper, etc.

We have implemented the product in Cisco cloud infrastructure itself. It is a private cloud based on a public cloud setup like AWS, Azure, or Google. It provides connectivity to the devices through the internet via a terminal. We require two people to manage the entire setup for maintenance.

The product's licensing cost is about 30% to 40% of the hardware cost. We have a yearly subscription. All the features are bundled in the licensing component. There are no additional costs involved.

It is one of the best products. It has a very good dashboard and a straightforward configuration. Although, it is not compliant with the requirements of specific industries that want to set it up within a particular region or country. In such cases, we provide them with on-premise solutions.

I recommend it to others and rate it a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for switching delivery. It's quite basic. It provides connectivity. They are ethernet switches.

We like the ability to perform data capture and open it with Wireshark in case of issues.

For me, the best functionality is provided by Meraki for any device. The ability to manage the devices for the dashboard online, from the online dashboard. It is great.

The product is very straightforward. 

The stability of the product is very good. 

The switch capacity needs to be improved. Today we deploy some MS switches for the data center. Previously, it was a small data center and we get the most powerful device into the portfolio of Meraki to respond to this subject. However,  it could be great to have a better capacity with 10 gigs or 40 gigs, for example.

As a physical device, it's not extremely scalable.

We started to resell Meraki devices to our customers around 2016. It's been around six years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

The product is not scalable. It's a physical device and therefore limited. 

It's possible when you have virtualization, for example. For VMX, maybe, by the deployment VMX by Terraform and configuration automation, it's possible. However, with the physical devices, and so the switches, with the stack, we have scalability with the ports, with the interfaces, through a new device. I did it to the stack, however, globally, the solution, it's not as scalable as it could be. However, it's just due to the fact that it is a physical device.

The support is very good. We are very satisfied with the technical support we get. They always resolve the issues we have.

Positive

I'm also familiar with Juniper or Huawei. The main differences between them are the facility to configure or deploy, and ease of use. Meraki is a real plug-and-play solution. That's why it's really good. With Juniper in particular you do need strong skills to get the most out of it. 

It's a straightforward setup. It's not overly difficult. That's why we continue to use Meraki. I'd rate the product four out of five. 

The deployment is very quick. It takes only a few seconds to a few minutes. It's very fast. We have developed some API applications to automate the configuration and deployment without using the dashboard. We only need to put up a .CSV file and everything is done automatically. 

It is a good solution, however, it is quite expensive. I'd rate the cost at a three out of five. You do have to pay for the license, however, the licensing is quite expensive. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. We are quite satisfied with the solution genera. 

I use Meraki MS Switches for cloud-based management and web visibility, which I can control from a single pane of glass. I have a controller that lets me manage all devices.

I found the cloud-managed dashboard most valuable in Meraki MS Switches.

Management from a single dashboard is what I want to see from Meraki MS Switches.

The level of stability of Meraki MS Switches would depend on the environment.

My rating for Meraki MS Switches is nine out of ten in terms of scalability.

The Meraki MS Switches technical support is good, so I rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for Meraki MS Switches was straightforward and had no problems. The product is easy to manage and deploy. Deployment only took one week.

My company deployed Meraki MS Switches based on requirements. That was the only deployment strategy.

My company pays for Meraki MS Switches yearly. Pricing-wise, the product is relatively inexpensive.

My company is both a reseller and user of Cisco Meraki solutions, including Meraki MS Switches.

I work on different models of Meraki MS Switches.

My company has multiple clients using Meraki MS Switches.

I recommend the product to others for cloud-based management. You can manage everything from the cloud.

My rating for Meraki MS Switches is nine out of ten.

We use Meraki MS Switches for larger companies, as part of our organization, where they are connected to the servers here via VPN. They are used daily.

The stability and workflow of Meraki MS Switches have most improved our network management. I also appreciate the high availability offered by the solution. I use it because the environment is working fine with no major problems and it's easy to manage.

Meraki MS Switches is a complete solution. I don't have specific feedback for improvement. However, there was an issue with the uplink when the port was removed and had to be reinstalled, which caused a temporary dropout.

For three years.

I find Meraki MS Switches to be stable, with no significant issues reported.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

I don't have much experience interacting with Cisco technical support.

Positive

Before Meraki switches, we used a mixed solution of Cisco switches. There were no problems with these solutions, but they wanted a more unified approach.

The initial setup was conducted by a third party. I'm not directly involved in the setup process.

A certified third-party team handled the implementation of the solution.

Meraki MS Switches, including their licensing, are somewhat expensive, particularly when compared with competitor solutions like HP.

I recommend Meraki MS Switches for larger companies rather than small businesses. Small businesses might benefit more from other solutions.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.