Aruba Instant Reviews

We use Aruba Instant Access Points — one of the components of Instant Manager — to deploy wireless services to the ships that are running on the coast of Antwerp. This would be tug boats and other vessels in shipping that need communications capabilities.  

I think Aruba Instant Management is really pretty flexible because of the versatility of the configuration and it just works very well for our purposes.  

The management interface in Aruba Instant Management is Aruba AirWave. In my opinion, it is not very user-friendly. This is not a criticism of the Aruba Products overall. In fact they work very well. I am referring specifically to Aruba Airwave — just that one component within the solution. If Aruba would do something with this to make this interface better, the product would be much improved.  

Other than that I have no idea what the product would need. I have everything that I need functionally, so I can not think of a missing feature.  

We have been using the product for four years.  

The product is very stable. We have no problems with that area of usage.  

I believe Instant Management is easy to scale. However, we do not use it on large scale environments so I cannot give you a very accurate opinion of that aspect of its use. We use it in very small setups. I do not have first-hand experience with how it works if you extend to a larger scale.  

As far as how extensively Aruba Instant is being used, we could be using it daily. It is operational 24-hours a day — that is for sure. It is stable and it works fine. But in management, we sometimes use it only once a week.  

We have three users in management to take care of the system if it needs attention. But that is management only. There are more users who are actually on the wireless, of course.  

We have not had the need to contact Aruba technical support but that could be a good sign.  

Aruba is the first product that had the capabilities that we were interested in so we did not use another product previous to this one for this purpose.  

The initial setup is pretty complex. We were able to set it up by ourselves without the help of consultants or vendors but it took some time to get it done. I think the first set up took about two days which is longer than we had hoped.  

My advice to people considering this solution is that Aruba Instant Management is a very good group of products and it is very stable. Be aware that there is quite a learning curve for the AirWave management platform.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Aruba Instant Management as an eight-out-of-ten. It is not a nine or a ten because of the problem with the user-friendliness of the AirWave management platform. The products offer a lot of flexibility. Almost everything can be configured. There is only a problem with the one component that causes it to be difficult to understand and difficult to set up and get working for the first time. It detracts from the usability of the product and how quickly it can be deployed.  

Our primary use case is for basic Wi-Fi and also for the captive portal authentication with 802.1X MAC.

The integration with ClearPass is the most valuable feature. 

It also has good onboarding. It's a good product. 

The meshing could use improvement but aside from that nothing else really needs improvement. It meshes well but the product's channels need to be understood better. It's not like Cisco. You set up your indoor stuff and there are channels you must exclude from the mesh.

I have been using Aruba for the last five years. 

The stability is very good. I'm very impressed with it. I've been working with it for years. 

Because it's Aruba, I can strap onto anything. We can use it anywhere. 

Maybe an outdoor range would be nice. 

Their technical support is brilliant.

The price is very well situated. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Since I bought this brought I would like to have Aruba Central for free.

The product technically works fantastic but if I'm going to spend a couple of thousand rands on buying an access point, I'd like to have Aruba Central for free, for the equipment that I've purchased. That would be nice without purchasing the licenses because we've already purchased the hardware.

My advice to someone considering this solution is to put it everywhere and get rid of Cisco.

Our primary use case of this solution is to control our networks.

We've been using Aruba since 2014 from my office but in our country we've now deployed a couple of sites. We're actually now working on a project to deploy one of the biggest hotels in Zimbabwe.

The features I have found most valuable is that the solution creates a guest portal for guest networks, and setting up SSID authentication to the regular server. I also like the settings and the roles on the profiles, like where you can block some sites etc.

The only issue that I have encountered was the captive portal through Facebook. I found that it wasn't working, so I created a couple of cases through the Aruba portal.

Aruba Instant is stable and it's easy to manage.

The solution is scalable. I've deployed it in different multiple environments. My office has less than 50 users. I've recently deployed it at a school, which has about 300 users. So we have quite a few sites. We do have plans to increase our usage at our hotel site, where we are working on a mobility master.

We do have some challenges here and there, and then we have to seek support from Aruba. They are good.

No, we haven't used a different solution before.

The initial setup was straightforward but when I did the authentication, the capture portal wasn't coming up. Deployment took me about a day. I did everything myself, which was an advantage at the office.

We only pay for the support and the contract licenses from Aruba Instant.

We did compare it to other solutions because our computers are Ruckus. We have compared Ruckus and Cisco, which became weak. Cisco, from my former research, is good in switching and dropping, but in terms of Wi-Fi, Aruba Instant is the best portal.

Aruba is a great product. I've used it for a couple of years and it's been working well. I haven't used Ruckus but from what I've seen, licenses for Ruckus should be renewed annually. You have to purchase the license to use the product. But with Aruba, you buy the product through the distributor, so it's yours and you don't have to buy any additional licenses. The only licenses that you buy are for AirWave, which is the monitoring software, or ClearPass, which is for guest access or onboarding.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. I would like to see an improvement with the captive portal connecting to Facebook, but the rest of the program works perfectly well. A guest portal will also be great. Some schools have a system that we're trying to integrate with Aruba, it's called 24online and it is where you create voucher systems.

The roaming feature is the solution's most valuable aspect.

Technical support needs improvement. We use the forum for technical support assistance, but it's not enough. If you're talking with a technician, they're in India. They cannot give you the service that you need. Sometimes have problems with some personal services and technical support is not helpful in this area.

The solution needs to be more compatible with IoT and smart devices.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The scalability of the solution is excellent.

We aren't satisfied with technical support. If you open a ticket, it's 24 hours at least before they get back to you. If you're in the enterprise-level business you can wait, you can come in next day. However, a small or medium business cannot handle the cost of the delay.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We're an Aruba reseller. Our clients are typically small and medium-sized companies.

It's a good product. If you are an enterprise business, you have your own team for every service and you have time to research, but for small companies, support is not good and you don't have the resources of an internal team that could mitigate that. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.