Meraki MX Review

I was using the Meraki MX Firewall with a complete Meraki set up (WAPs over 43 acres) and, in general, it was a really lovely system to administer. 

We had a problem with our MX100 and Meraki sent us a spare the next day so we'd have it on hand in case of issues - we did end up doing a swap to check if this solved the problem. The swap took less than an hour to have it up and running. Meraki products are great for swapping in and out and generally administering. I don't think you need to have much training to deal with most Meraki appliances - the user interface is very easy to sort. It's cloud based and I never had problems accessing it. I've taken some screenshots from the Meraki PDF on the MX100.

This gives you an idea of the kind of thing you're going to see in the cloud interface. In terms of giving your Execs information or checking our possible security issues, it's handy. 

I've nabbed these facts from the Cisco site: 

• Gigabit SFP connectivity
• Stateful firewall throughput: 750 Mbps
• Recommended maximum clients: 500 

Cloud-based centralized management
• Managed centrally over the Web
• Classifies applications, users and devices
• Zero-touch, self-provisioning deployments

Networking and security
• Stateful firewall
• Auto VPN™ self-configuring site-to-site VPN
• Active Directory integration
• Identity-based policies
• Client VPN (IPsec)
• Smart link bonding

Traffic shaping and application management
• Layer 7 application visibility and traffic shaping
• Application prioritization
• Web caching
• Choose WAN uplink based on traffic type

Advanced security services
• Content filtering
• Google SafeSearch and YouTube for Schools
• Intrusion prevention (IPS)
• Antivirus and antiphishing filtering
• Requires Advanced Security License

The features feed into defence in depth so you have an IPS, content filtering, AV and anti-phishing. The self configuring VPN was a real bonus and it also integrates into AD (like most). 

Firmware updates can be automated and rolled back extremely easily if you have any problems. It was a nice surprise to see how organised and automated Merkai were. 

Be aware, if you suddenly get more staff and want to have more than 500 users then it's not a firmware upgrade. It's a new appliance - we experienced this and had to look into the MX400 which takes you to 2000 clients; yes, there's a bit of a gap from the MX100 and MX400. 

Would I change anything? As above, the fact you need to go from MX100 (500 staff) to MX400 (2000) staff and there is nothing in between. I think that's a bit cheeky.