Meraki MS Switches Reviews

When I'm advising customers on solutions I have to know what they need. If they are happy using a cloud management platform and they are looking at running more than a single line of business, then having the web portal with Meraki is a simple solution. It provides a single-pane-of-glass in terms of management. It is easy to switch between the wireless, the security, and controlling the switching if they own all of those different technologies provided by Meraki. With other vendor brands, you might find that the operating cost would potentially increase due to them having to manage different platforms.

The most valuable feature for us are the APIs. Development there has been very exciting and now we can actually drill down to client levels. What that means is that when I look at the portal I can drill down to the users that are logged on to the network and see what they are using the network for. It is very valuable to us and the client to have that ease of use and the capability of providing high-level service and service quality on the switches. It is a nice and easy way of leveraging utility and resources by pushing out policies from a single location to wherever my Meraki devices may be.

If I was an IT manager and I had sites globally, Meraki would be a perfect fit. I could reach the devices that are overseas without me or anyone else having to touch them. It is very much like zero-touch deployment, which is fantastic. An obvious bonus is that this capability is still backed by Meraki R&D with talented teams to support it. When changes and new features come out, I don't have to worry about doing software upgrades on devices because it's all done in the cloud. They just load it up and on you go. Of course, many other things are happening with Meraki and other developments that they are working on with Cisco. The whole story will come out in the resolution of what they choose to do on the security side of things and what capabilities you can gain by using Cisco and Meraki together.

A complaint that I might have about the services is the compliance risk response. If I or our clients put too many devices on a network, threatening emails get triggered by Meraki saying that we are out of compliance. It can put unnecessary fear into the customer of the product that their services will be curtailed or that they will have to pay escalated fees. The customer in turn then pushes the problem on to the reseller — us — which can create an awkward situation. We are seen as a less-trusted advisor because what we provided was poorly planned. I think there is a major problem with warning clients in that way. I've started hearing customers wishing that they had not gotten into a subscription just because of that policy. It is all well good having a subscription policy but making customers edgy is making some consider switching away from Meraki. Losing customers due to the means of enforcement of the subscription service is pretty ill-advised.

I think one of the things that Meraki started to develop and then held back on is unified communications. Meraki started beating the drum about using Meraki for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and then they suddenly stopped it. It would be nice to actually see that coming to the market, especially in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa). With Cisco's acquisitions such as Broadsoft, Meraki could potentially invest in that technology, so they would be able to provide a voice platform backed by Cisco. It could be an excellent situation and fulfill their promises at the same time.

There's been a couple of challenges with the stability of the solution. For example, a year ago some of the software products that were going into the switches were not functioning as expected. You cannot really fault the product for that exactly. They are nine out of ten in terms of stability. You turn them on, they work, they get along with other components, and they keep working.

Meraki is scalable but it's only seen as a stackable switch solution. The one thing is the mid-market where obviously Meraki has traditionally had most of their focus on. So, when you buy switches and you want to scale, you have to have them in switch stacks. What Meraki hasn't done — and missed a bit of an opportunity in my opinion — is they've not really developed a low form factor switching solution in the form of a chassis switch. I think that could open up a massive opportunity for Meraki in terms of being seen as more of an enterprise solution.

As far as our own scaling we have seen their numbers grow in terms of selling their solutions whereas we've seen other lines of business that decline. So, I'd say that we've definitely seen exponential growth in sales of Meraki as a solution. More and more customers whom I talk to get to the point of serious consideration and go through the finer processes of discovering what Meraki is all about. People who choose it seem to like it so much that they stick to it. I think the only time I've really seen a compelling reason for not going with Meraki is that the security with regards to firewalls is still Meraki solutions. They really don't quite compete with Cisco and their ASA (Adaptive Security Appliance) technology.

In any case, we do continue to have plans to scale our usage of this solution for us and our customers.

I have not been in contact with Meraki support directly. I do know that there are lots of different ways to actually reach out to support people. Meraki now sells different levels of supports so that you can choose a level that will fit your needs. Obviously, as partners, I've got all the contact details. There is also the Make a Wish feature within the portal that we can use to ask for a special request. They seem to be switched on in terms of what they do and how they do it. All the technicians seem young and very knowledgeable in terms of their areas of expertise.

The installation is straightforward. There are some simple rules of a sort that you have to use. And, of course, Meraki does make it easy. If the opportunity that an end-user is working on is large enough, then there may be a reason to look into training courses that Meraki offers. They offer these in order to help customers in terms of adopting, managing, and expanding their use of the technology. 

A lot of configuration can be done on the cloud before actually having the switches go live. When the switches go live and the license has been activated, then you actually push the configurations on to the switches. From that point of view, I think it is just a great mentality that Meraki has got now around using the portal.

Of course, as partners, we do our own implementations. Our clients often need assistance from our side or from integrators for the deployments. A lot of the time our position with clients is more advisory. The customers know what they know. What they don't know and understand is what they haven't seen before. Some customers like to just dive in and try and work it out for themselves. I've seen clients on the other end of the spectrum where they need help in terms of redoing IP addressing schemes. What they need is some assistance with regards to making sure that it is all configured correctly and doing testing as they are doing the migration from one type of switch to another type of switch. The depth of our involvement all depends on the customer's skills. But even being trained as a Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) doesn't necessarily mean you are going to be able to get straight to doing a Meraki installation.

As a reseller, evaluating options is somewhat built into the business structure. I deal with Meraki, Aruba, and Cisco around enterprise networking, security, voice, and wireless.

My experience with Meraki goes back to the MS-1 series. That's when I first took the original Meraki training course and got the CMNA (Certified Meraki Networking Associate) certification. We got to play on the newest series of switches around at that time. Those have already gone past their lifecycle. We participate in ongoing training now and continue to get a look at the latest versions of the Meraki switches and get to know early on what is happening in terms of new development. The product is now becoming more of a hybrid with Cisco and other vendor products rather than just purely focusing on Meraki as a stand-alone solution.

If I have any advice for people considering the product, it is to jump on board and don't look back. If you're after a platform that is completely cloud compatible, a solution that will allow you to manage it from anywhere you need to be, then it's definitely a step in the right direction going forward. Meraki seems to cover most things. It takes away the need for CLI (Command-line Interface) which is obviously an aging technology that people were using a decade ago. Now it is a web-based interface and it is available on many different devices. You can now take management anywhere you go. How you push it out affects what you can do with it. Visibility and control are fantastic from Meraki.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Meraki switches as an eight out of ten. How good it serves a purpose depends on the use case. For different use cases and different scenarios, I'd give it a different rating. For example, if it is deployed for a data center, then I would rate Meraki very low because the product is not designed to be a data center switch. If I'm using it for total visibility in terms of applications and controls and what is happening on a network, then I rate it very high. For that, I'd give it as much as a 10. Its rating is all about the use case.

I had to provide solutions for a pharmaceutical company, where data plays a very important role. This is where testing takes place and security is critical, and they have a lot of security on-site. If you want to have more VLANs and so on, you can do it through a core switch.

It all depends on the customer's requirements. For example, if the customer uses SAP HANA, they will go for a new direct server. On the new direct server, you have an output of 10 GBs, and based on the output and the number of users, I provide the solution to the customer.

It also depends on the application. For example, in SAP HANA, it'll depend on all the customer's modules, how many servers will make a Nutanix server, for example, 12 to 16 servers, and the number of users. 

The cloud part of Meraki Switches is very good. They also have a good GUI. It's a complete solution. I like the switching and the monitoring part.

The throughputs, especially the throughput path, can be improved on the core switches. I think they should improve the throughput in the core switches to enable higher throughputs. A little bit of training for customers like online training would definitely help us.

I provided a couple of Cisco Meraki solutions to clients last year. 

Meraki MS Switches are stable.

Meraki MS Switches are scalable.

Technical support is good. Our team is already certified in this area, and if anything critical happens, we try to log into their portal. If not, we'll have our own tech support handle it.

On the switching front, I have provided a lot of solutions on Juniper and also on HP Aruba.

The installation is not a problem at all. It takes about a day to configure all the systems.

We have about four or five people working with Meraki switches.

When you compare it to other switches like HP, Juniper, and Ruckus, Meraki MS Switches are cheaper.

I would recommend Meraki MS Switches. I like Cisco Meraki Switches, and I have friends who've been using them. They're a couple of system integrators who only use Meraki.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Meraki MS Switches a seven.

All of our endpoints are connected to our servers via the Meraki switches. Every user goes through them and it mirrors a cloud portal that allows you to administer it.

It hasn't really improved the way our organization functions. It's very similar to any other switch that I've used, although it is easier to manage than other switches.

The licensing model needs to be improved. The way they license their products, I'd rather just pay for a device by the device, and not have to pay annual subscription fees.

We have been using Meraki MS Switches for about two years.

This product is very stable.

This is a scalable solution and everybody in the organization uses these switches. This includes the president and CEO, the business development underwriters, and everybody else. In total, there are about 75 users.

I have not used their technical support.

Prior to Meraki, I used HP switches. I changed because they were too old and it was time to replace them. They were at the end of the normal lifecycle and Meraki had some great reviews, so I figured that I'd try them out.

The initial setup is straightforward.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to do your research to make sure that it's exactly what you need. These are powerful switches and they can do a lot. They probably do more than most people might need so just make sure that it's the right switch for you.

To me, this is a product that meets all of the needs that anyone could possibly have for a networking device. I mentioned the issue with the licensing, although all of the manufacturers are now going with that licensing model. I think that I have that problem with anybody, at this point.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We deploy the solution on-premises.

The solution is very stable.

The pricing of the solution can be improved.

We have been using this solution for approximately two years and are currently using version MX64.

The solution is scalable. There are currently seven people using it in our organization.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. The solution is good, but the pricing can be improved.

Our use case of the product is for our primary infrastructure on campus and supporting our wireless network culture. I'm the director of institutional technology and we are users of Meraki. 

The solution provides us with better statistics than we previously had. That's a great feature.

Having the Meraki GUI controlled elements meant that I could train my help desk guys without having to try and teach a command line.

I'm an old CLI guy from Cisco so I've had to give up some of the granularity that I'm used to having. With Cisco I could narrow things down but now I'm stuck to exactly what Meraki gives me. I don't have any options. Previously I used to be able to look at light levels on an object but I can't do that now. Those are a couple of little issues, but I do get it right out of the box whereas with Cisco it requires spending thousands of dollars and buying extra equipment to get the knowledge of what's going on in your network.

They've already released some new things on their flagship model. I'd like to see the price come down a little bit, but you've got to pay for what you get like the 38 series switch. With Cisco you can stack them for command and control whereas with Meraki, you can stack them with power, but each individual switch is still controlled as an individual switch. You don't see them as one switch. They're stacked with stacking cables, it's multiple switches. It's little stuff, nothing serious. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

It's a stable solution and great for software updates. You just click on it and it does it automatically for you. The next morning it's ready to rock and roll. At my school, I have 170 faculty staff, and I've got 800 students.

I work in a school and we've had a huge disruption with coronavirus and having students studying remotely on campus and remotely off campus and needing more throughput than what the firewall can cope with. I'm right at the cusp of needing a bigger firewall. Meraki doesn't necessarily always have the exact feature that you'd like. 

I think the support is good. Sometimes they even tell you that you've got a problem before you get to it. They've been very forthcoming with their help.

As mentioned, I previously worked with Cisco. I was at a Cisco shop before I got here and we had one person to do networking, and two guys that worked in the help desk so I helped out on the networking side. The main difference is that with Cisco you can get exactly what you want but you can't do that with Meraki.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

It's well worth the time and effort to get the solution going and use it in the future.

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

We are a consultancy and we work with a variety of networking products, including Meraki MS Switches. Our primary use case is cloud orchestration, where you can log in from anywhere and manage our devices remotely.

The most valuable feature is the ability to orchestrate the network from the cloud.

These switches are simple to use and the user interface is good.

Technical support can be faster to respond to non-telephone originated inquiries.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for the past five months.

We are satisfied with the stability and plan to continue using this product.

I would rate scalability at 60% because it doesn't have the core functionality required for aggregated interfaces. For example, you can not use a virtual device context, so you can't scale easily.

We have close to 300 users in the organization.

The technical support is awesome. However, when you leave a case, they will not immediately contact you unless you first call them and explain that it is of high priority. They will respond immediately but it is important that you contact them by phone, first.

I used to work primarily with Juniper switches but I also work with Cisco and Meraki products. I was not part of the decision to use Meraki.

The initial setup is very straightforward and they can be deployed within minutes.

We have the hardware on-premises but it is a cloud-based, SD-WAN solution.

I normally deploy these switches myself.

For cloud usage, I recommend this product. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

When it comes to troubleshooting, in the past we had to take the console and do configuration changes, and we had to be on location or have a VPN connection to access it. But with Meraki, there is the advantage that you have dashboard access via the internet and you can work on it from anywhere. With Meraki switches, there is virtual stacking. Let's say you have two branches where two different switches are located. I can take a few ports from switch 1 and few ports from switch 2 and I can do a virtual stack between these ports. And there is a port schedule, as well. For example, some customers want to do make budget choices to save power or something. There is a port schedule option to give power for access points through these PoE ports on a schedule you choose, like during office hours. Morning 9:00 to evening 6:30, and it will work only Monday to Friday. I can schedule so these ports will be running those times only. In an annual scenario, this can mean more savings for the customer.

You can select multiple ports at a time in a checkbox, and you can do a port configuration. If uplinks are required, you can configure that, too. There are a couple of tools available in the Tools section where you can do ARP, Ping, LED status, etc. If any network goes down or is getting any warnings, you'll get an immediate amber symbol. We'll get alerts and an immediate email even if one link goes down or anything is wrong. We require some additional integrated tools for when a switch is down, like WhatsUp Gold, or SolarWinds. So on the back-end, we need to integrate our email servers into the process. We need more tools for that. But in the dashboard, it all comes together and gives greater visibility, including the UX pack if you want - everything will be there.

The features part is good. Everything in terms of access and everything else.

In terms of what could be improved, there's API. For example, we recently implemented Microsoft Azure. We have it integrated now into the dashboard for authentication. Dashboard authentication includes local users which we are creating in the dashboard itself. We integrated Azure with our local active directory. As the administrator in IT, I can log into the dashboard with my AD credentials only, so we used Xero and SAML with the Microsoft Azure. It's working fine. Similarly in the camera. Generally, the camera is in the cloud. In the camera, every field requires you to enter some information. If you have a cloud archive, it will be directed towards your Meraki cloud based on whatever storage license you have, 90 days or 30 days. But we worked on a different approach. We developed some more internal applications with other partners. We are pitching data from the Meraki camera, and we are putting into our internal storage with the Python script in the back-end.

Another thing is CMX. There is a location tracking for the employees who are inside, and with Meraki there is a Bluetooth option with a separate radio. They have a separate Bluetooth radio, Air Marshal radio, 2.4 and 5 GHz, for all the different radios, but it's all ELM mode in the old access points. It serves the clients as well as monitors the rogue access points. But in Meraki, we have a separate radio for it to monitor all the Bluetooth clients who are coming and who are identified from the dashboard. We will send it through the API to the location-scanning API to a third-party application and it gives you greater visibility. We can customize our own application of the dashboard. For example if you have a retail shop, you can put your store map on there and you can track the clients, like how many clients have visited. We can customize it. We worked on that customization pack.

In terms of troubleshooting, if we get more tools there is an issue. Our pack has some internal access, right? In traditional solutions we can go to the CLI and we can see whatever you want to change and you can play around with it. But in Meraki, if they got additional tools maybe it would help. In terms of MS I see some complications. There are some voice-related services that some customers are expecting, so they want to put an MS firewall in Azure or AWS, and they want to ship the traffic from that firewall. For example, I am at different branches, so the initial firewall will make the decision. They are looking at that kind of scenario. I hear from some of the customers with MS, that there are some voice-related, SIP services. So it's a limitation. If you have a voice service with AmEx, I saw something that SIP ALG will not support AmEx. So that's one limitation here.

I have been working with Meraki Switches for the past year. I have actually worked with all Meraki products, not only a particular one, as it is a complete stack. I've worked with them for a couple of POC's that we did for the customers. They were implemented mostly in firewalls and access points. A feature we recently implemented for one location was Mindtree.

In terms of stability, it is stable.

You can scale it up. You can take any traditional scenario that you have a license for and scale up. I'm working with 200 or so people, so I just bought a few access points and a few switches. If you compare Meraki with the traditional, every switch or every firewall and every access point, every WLCL switch in the traditional way requires some licenses. If that device has a MAC throughput capability, I need to go for another device. If there is a WLCL pack, it requires another device I need to purchase. But with Meraki, there is nothing like that, the license will cover the hardware, RMA, and the licensing plan.

Recently, it converted from the quote elimination to party-wise licenses. If you have a device license, you simply add the licenses and you can play around with it. There are more restrictions, like if you see access points with MR, ENT it will come with an MV, so it's not about the model. For example, today I have an MR42, tomorrow I'll buy some MR53 or MR87. It is independent of the model and you can add whenever you have the API licenses. Similarly, if you have a camera license, you can add. If you have MDM or MV, you can add. It's unlimited. It is scalable, and it gives you flexibility and security. Every device will establish a tunnel with official encryption towards the Meraki cloud and all the devices will be securely connected and it will take less than 1 kbps in terms of configuring data. 

We have worked on the homes of CEO's and directors and up to to hospitals, retail and manufacturing establishments. Everything is supported and scalable.

They give 24/7 support, so whenever you have an issue, you can write or call directly if you feel that it is higher-priority. You can simply call the toll-free number and they'll immediately come to the call and help. In terms of any troubleshooting, they will do it from their end. Because we have some limited access in terms of troubleshooting, if you want to do some changes like firmware-related bugs or something, they will fix it from their end on the back-end.

The initial setup is very simple. I ordered the devices and immediately the software is loaded and you'll receive a dashboard key so you can start the configuration. Once the device is running you can simply play around with it.

It only takes minutes to set up for basic configuration. If you're looking for integrations you may need to do some registration or back-end coding or something. Apart from that, if it's a dashboard it is a configuration template. If you have multiple branches, you can create one template for other branches.

I recommend Meraki MS Switches. If the user wants more flexibility in terms of configuration and manageability, I would definitely recommend implementing it.

On a scale of one to ten I would rate Meraki MS Switches a nine.

There are many use cases for the solution. We implement them mainly for SMEs.

The switches, overall, are very good.

The newest switches, in particular, are excellent.

The initial setup is simple.

The problem that we saw with some customers is that it's very hard to train them to manage everything on the cloud, and some customers don't want this. 

The firewall is not very powerful. The other week, one of the switches only gave one gigabit of output. It's become a concern for our customers.

It is very difficult to know what we should do. There should be a queue available to connect over the VPN. However, there was a lack of an image in the other queue. Once, when a customer wanted to tour the system, there were issues with connectivity to the VPN, which was offputting. 

The solution is very stable. We've tested it extensively and it's very good. It's also quite fast. A company doesn't have to fear reliability with Meraki. They shouldn't expect to deal with bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

The scalability is very good on the backend. We've even run some stress tests to see how the solution would hold up to expansion and have had great results. If an organization needs to scale up, they can do so with Meraki. It's not a problem at all.

The solution offers okay technical support. Users need pretty good access to senior engineers on the technical support team. Sometimes you have really bad errors on the site and you need very advanced help. A more junior technical support staff member will not be able to assist. Meraki needs to continue to work to ensure senior staff is available to deal with those levels of calls as they happen. A user expects to have a senior engineer to take the question from the beginning to the end if big issues arise.

Last week or last month we had an issue where we really needed a senior engineer and the support staff we got originally didn't know how to answer our questions. We had to pay for a more senior engineer.

We also use Aruba and HPE switches. We use a combination.

We've found the setup to be very straightforward.

On the promotion side, the marketing team will help when something goes wrong. You can write to someone at the company and they can help troubleshoot any issues as soon as something comes up.

Typically, it only takes about one day to deploy a switch. For a simple deployment, we just take it and connect it to the new port, and then we just connect everything to the computer. It's very easy. We haven't had issues or complications.

We're an integrator; we implement the solution for our clients.

We typically sign contracts for years as opposed to yearly. One year might be a bit expensive, but if you choose a long-term contract, it's very good. The pricing is very good. It's quite competitive in the marketplace. There are others that are much more expensive than this product. It's affordable, even for small companies.

We're an integrator. We tend to test things before we send them to our customers.

We are a very small company, we are constantly looking for competitive pricing, as we don't have big budgets to throw around.

The solution is very good. From using the software to deployment, Meraki is good. Even enterprises would benefit from using the solution. Although we typically deal with smaller companies, I'd pick Meraki every time.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I would rate it higher, however, we have unique needs for the VPN, and require complex software features