Meraki SD-WAN Reviews

The solution has the ability to jump from one ISP to another with minimum downtime.

The speed at which we can change from one provider to another has been great.  

The added security has been useful. However, we are barely using all the capabilities of SD-WAN.

It's easy to set up. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability has been good.

The feature that we are interested in is working perfectly. It's a matter of cost and expenses that we may take some issue with.

We've used the solution for a while.

As far as we can tell, the stability's great. The speed is great. We didn't experiment with it that much to have the opportunity to really see any faults. We've just come in and tried to catch up with everything that was going on.

The solution can scale well. 

We plan to increase it as much as can once we feel comfortable with the features of the product.

We did not previously use a different product. We tried Meraki first.

It is very straightforward to set up. We have two firewalls connected to the device. We're using Meraki since we're a Meraki user, and it makes sense to start with what we have. Basically, we take it from there. We have all our sites on Meraki, so it's the basic starting point.

The licensing is very expensive. 

The fact that it does not recognize our cost from the previous licenses is a big drawback. The price covers the licensing and the box itself. 

We are looking at other options right now. 

We deal with a reseller. We have 58 different networks. However, none of them has a particular server. We're using it to interconnect. We're using it all over the state. 

I'd advise potential new users to understand the costs that are likely involved first. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Apart from SQL, I used to work a lot with networking solutions. I am more of a network specialist, and then I started to do SQL after that. I'm experienced with networking rather than application experience for databases.

Meraki SD-WAN has improved productivity greatly. It is easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot, so problem resolution is quicker.

The redundancy feature of Meraki SD-WAN has most significantly enhanced network performance. Additionally, the security features are good on the MX devices.

The configuration from the firewall side could be improved a little bit more.

I have about four to five years of experience working with Meraki SD-WAN.

I would rate the stability of the solution as eight out of ten. There were no significant troubles with stability.

I would rate the scalability of Meraki SD-WAN as ten out of ten. It is highly scalable.

I would rate the customer service and support eight out of ten.

Positive

We did look at other solutions such as Fortinet and VeloCloud. However, we decided to go with Meraki SD-WAN because we were already a Meraki customer and saw the ease of deployment.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

The deployment was done through a third-party integrator.

Meraki SD-WAN has contributed to cost savings by being easy to deploy and troubleshoot, making problem resolution quicker.

The pricing of Meraki SD-WAN is a little bit on the pricey side. However, it is still a valuable product despite the cost.

We looked at Fortinet and VeloCloud. We chose Meraki SD-WAN because we were already a Meraki customer and appreciated the ease of deployment.

I would recommend Meraki SD-WAN because it is easy to deploy, highly scalable, and easy to manage.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our connectivity was pretty good even before we used Meraki. After we used Meraki, everything worked fine and still does. The thing is that once we started using Meraki, our management became simpler. It's simpler for us to become simpler.

We have other solutions, and we wanted one that would integrate with our current ones. This product is pretty good and simple, so we learned the simplicity of a product.

We currently use some features. It is secure, and some features, like work device management, are very useful.

We selected this solution because it needs to be always connected. In some cases, like an Internet outage, this can make the solution unmanageable.

If the network disconnects, we have access to the device but cannot make any changes.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for the last six months.

During the initial setup, it wasn't stable. It was very problematic, and we had a lot of issues. Now it's very stable.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is good. 2,000 users are using this solution.

We use the Meraki SD-WAN solution daily as users who consume the network. However, our involvement is very limited if you're asking about managing the devices or connecting to them. We barely manage it because it's largely automatic. It works well, so we typically only intervene about once a week.

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

Technical support is very cumbersome. It's not on point. It takes them a lot of time to understand the problems. It's very complex.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. However, it took us a lot of time to work with an integrator and to declutter, and it took us weeks to deploy.

Meraki is a combination of cloud and on-prem, but most of our deployments are on-prem connected to the cloud. The management of Meraki is always on the cloud, but the devices are on-prem, and we have deployed multiple devices on-prem.

We use a third party for deployment. It still took us a lot of time. 

The product's pricing is moderate.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We mainly use Meraki SD-WAN for connecting sites.

The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is the Auto VPN.

Meraki SD-WAN could improve by adding wireless access time-scheduled and overall capabilities.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately six years.

The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba.

We have approximately 50 customers using this solution.

Our use cases are mostly in the financial sector. 

The classifying of the applications, for example, has been a very useful feature. It helps in contract service, in traffic shaping, and in controlling the balancing between the links that they have over the internet. They have the intention of DI, the direct internet access, as the agencies on the remote side have direct internet access to be able to consume some applications in the cloud.

The product does have a variety of features we can work with.

There's a good balance between 4G and LTE. There are backups to keep the connection going. The MPLS link we had, for example, is just for a backup in case one of the two links goes down.

We have had some problems doing the implementation. We had to open a case with Cisco. The deployment was solved with Cisco's tech help. 

In terms of the applications, the policies that we configured didn't work as expected. However, Cisco's tech also helped us deal with this as well. 

Meraki has a limitation in the number of links that it can work. For example, in Cisco, we can work with many, many links if you link with Viptela, however, in Meraki, we just get to work with two links or a maximum number of three links including the LAN link. It was a problem. When clients need many links and you have just two links it's a problem.

I've worked with the solution for a while. I've done POCs with five or six different clients.

Technical support is quite helpful in general.

I have worked for the last 15 years, more or less, with Cisco. For the last eight years, I have worked with Cisco and Aruba, especially with Cisco in data center technologies, in SDN technologies like ACI, like SD-Access, or SD-WAN, for example. I have worked in design as well. For example, in the design of data centers, in the designs of WAN networks, LAN networks, and Wi-Fi networks.

I have experience with Cisco Viptela, and Cisco Meraki with the MX series, which I have basically worked with within Cisco Meraki.

In wireless, I have worked in Cisco with the Cisco Ethernet, for example, and in Meraki as well, and I have worked with the MR series in the Cisco in Meraki.

We implemented, for example, Meraki in eight places in a banking environment. We implemented the MX series and we did approach the provisioning that has the solution to develop the implementation in many places. We implemented it in more than 2,000 places - wherever they have services.

We struggled a bit with the implementation, however, we did reach out to Cisco and they were able to help us get back on track.

Cisco technical support did end up helping us with the implementation, however, we mostly did it ourselves. 

I work in a company that is a partner of Cisco and we sell the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution.

We have implementations both on-premises and in the cloud. 

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the access points and switches for remote locations for a client. We have 100 or more remote offices, and we connect those together to a data center in Florida.

We like that it is cloud-enabled.

The solution is easy to use. It's so simple to set up and connect the connection points. We don't require any static IPs or anything like that on our ISPs. It's very quick and easy.

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale so long as you are scaling Meraki products together. 

It offers a very good "single pane of glass," which helps with management and visibility.

I don't have any notes for improvement. 

Technical support could be more knowledgeable and responsive. 

You do have to pay for the solution in perpetuity. 

I've used the solution for six or seven years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it an eight or nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable as long as it is a Meraki-to-Meraki environment. 

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. 

Technical support isn't the best. They aren't as responsive as we would like. The quality of the techs needs to be better. They need to be more knowledgeable. 

Neutral

The solution is very simple to set up, and we don't need any static IPs from our ISPs. This simplifies things. 

I'd give the ease of setup a ten out of ten. 

Meraki's a subscription service. You "pay forever," and in that sense, it can be a little expensive. That said, I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

Other than warning people that it is a subscription, this does offer a single pane of glass which makes it easy to manage if you have multiple sites.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

The advantage of Cisco Meraki is that they take the complexity out of the backend, they do it for you. One of the reasons that we switched to Meraki SD-WAN, was because they have a feature called Auto VPN.

I have to keep the operating systems on my switches and routers current and to do that with any other piece of equipment, would literally require me to download the newer operating system. I'd have to get a TFTP server setup to transfer that image over to the appliance. By the time I'd finish, even on the five sites that I have, that's five routers and seven switches.  A combined or aggregated downtime across the sites, potentially of six hours. Whereas now I can schedule the update for the middle of the night or anytime, and it happens on its own.

The portal updates and reboots the device and off it goes. I don't even have to be connected to do it, it just happens. That is of value to me that nobody else is promoting. Between the Auto VPN and the update of the operating systems to keep current, those are the key features.

The network insight and reporting are great.

There are literally things you cannot do in a graphical user interface that can be done from a command line. Certain commands that you can issue to any device from a command line are basically explicit; the same as a server or any other IP or any computer-related piece of hardware. If you can get to the command line, you can give it explicit instructions that basically tell it to do something that's hard to describe in a graphical environment. Periodically, there are some issues that you have to figure out how to work around.  That's a very technical thing, most people won't run into it. 

Six years.

Excellent.

The wide-area network side of the setup was pretty straightforward. I picked up some little details here and there that I wasn't aware of. I had been playing with their equipment for probably a year and a half to two years before I implemented it here. But not for wide-area networking.  With some assistance from Cisco Meraki, as soon as I added appliances, literally within 15 minutes, the site is meshed into the WAN.

Now, since rebuilding the WAN with Cisco Meraki, I keep a cold standby in the closet. All I have to literally do is go to the portal, assign the license to it, and tell it that this is going to replace a defective unit at another site.  I plug that device in, within 15 minutes it will take over. So I'm no longer dependent on an outside resource to get our network up and running again.

That's what's important to me. Is there better equipment out there that can handle more bandwidth and maybe do more things? Yes, but I do not have the bandwidth and may be losing other benefits.

The portal is hosted by Cisco Meraki, it's in their servers someplace. The way routers and firewalls typically are managed, is the way it's been done forever. The way the purists want to do it is via direct access to the unit. Going from unit to unit, configuring and troubleshooting, and doing all the magic. With Meraki, you cannot do an internal configuration from the unit directly. The advantage of this is that the configuration on the device is encrypted. Nobody can walk up to it and reconfigure it. Nobody can gain remote access into it and reconfigure it. So in my mind, the security profile on the unit is actually more secure.

But then, once the unit is installed and assigned to your organization, it's registered in the portal. From there you look at each device and define what it can do, which is the essence of software-defined networking. The portal allows you to configure security, connectivity and filters.  Changes in the portal are communicated to affected devices in a matter of minutes.

I don't know that it's cheaper, but for the Auto VPN and automated updating, it's a time saver for a smaller IT team.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Meraki SD-WAN a rating of ten — it's been working flawlessly for us.

Meraki SD-WAN is a very good product as you get a backup for all the VPN and internet connections. You connect Meraki's cable, and you can have a secure port to deploy Meraki SD-WAN solution in the cloud, which is a very easy process to deploy. You can apply or make appliances for the other branches that you have, so it is easy to deploy Meraki in your network ecosystem.

Meraki can improve if it gets built in a way that provides network assistance. If Meraki obtains the technology to provide network assistance, then it can implement it manually in Meraki SD-WAN. With built-in network assistance, the tool will be one of the best tools in the market because its competitors are working on such a solution. I think if Meraki offers network assistance, it can improve in a much better manner.

I have experience using Meraki SD-WAN.

The technical support for the solution is very good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The difference between Fortinet and Meraki is in the area of pricing. FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. FortiGate is a solution that is very similar to Meraki. Fortinet works on security, so it offers a few more features than Cisco Meraki. For example, Cisco Meraki has only two ports for doing the failover. FotiGate is available at a cheap price and has many ports to manage failover. Meraki only has two ports.

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

One person can deploy the solution. People involved in the deployment of the product have CCNA certification.

The tool is plug-and-play in nature, so one who takes care of the product needs to have a basic knowledge of networking. Only those who have the basic knowledge can configure it and make policies in the Cisco Meraki platform.

The customer sees savings in the VPN area. If the customer has a VPN, they keep it along with the internet connection. The customers have Meraki SD-WAN, so they save by keeping the carrier's VPN solution. The VPN tool is more expensive than an internet connection.

The licensing is very easy to connect to the equipment. The tool offers term licenses. You have the same term licensing model available for all of your equipment, which is good for management. With other tools, the licensing models are similar to what Meraki offers. Meraki has many years of experience, so I prefer Meraki over the other products.

Meraki offers good pricing when compared to Fortinet and some of its competitors. The FortiGate and Cisco Meraki solutions have similar pricing.

I don't know how to explain how the tool's auto-VPN feature helps our company with operational efficiency.

I don't remember any issues with the VPN feature associated with Cisco Meraki.

When we tried integrating Meraki SD-WAN into our infrastructure, there were challenges. If the customer has another vendor's network, like an Aruba or Juniper network, the integration becomes complex because the engineer needs information about both the customer's network and the other vendor. The engineer needs to check if the configurations follow the same protocols, SSIDs, or VLANs.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.