Aruba ClearPass Reviews

Our primary use case for Aruba ClearPass is to use it in IoT services.

Aruba has improved my organization because it supported me on my level of access. I hope to see Aruba add routers to their portfolio. 

A very important feature for me is its support of a multi-tenant solution on deliverables. For instance, I have three customers, or three users, and I want each customer to have his own portal and his own database to manage their subscriber for reporting and for provision. 

Aruba needs to improve and the processes must be clear. I also believe the marketing is very important, as well as to split the database to be more specific, like having a user name, access point name or site name. 

In general, Aruba is very stable and it supports me every time I have issues related to my database. 

The scalability is good. We currently have about 100 users but we expect this to grow to 10,000 by the end of the year. So we plan to increase our usage. We won't need to employ extra staff because the support from Aruba is very good.

The technical support from Aruba is very good.

Before we started using Aruba we worked on Cisco, which has the same setup. They had the same access layer, access points, access controller and management at Cisco. We were, however, looking for a wireless solution.

The deployment took about two years, and then it took about two weeks for the configurations to be activated. 

We've invested in Aruba to increase our customers to 10,000 by the end of the year so we hope to see a good return on investment. 

We pay an annual licensing fee for Aruba and there are no additional costs.

I can recommend this solution for anyone in terms of guest management or from a security perspective. I will rate this a nine out of ten.

1. To improve overall security by segmenting the Guest and Corporate Vlan.

2. To Manage BYOD in the organization. 

3. To provide visbility on my corporate network using one management dashboard   environment for the devices

Secure organization by completely segmenting the guest and corporate vlans SSID. 

Less management and support effort on the management of BYOD. 

Clear visibility on the LAN .

The most valuable features would be: 

• Wireless segregation
• Bandwidth segmentation
• Prioritization
• BYOD management
• Overall visibility.

I would like the area of managing wired technology to be improved. Wireless is very good but I'm still struggling a bit to do my end to end configurations in the wired technology area.

The Virtual Machine for the Clearpass sometimes has issues with loosing the management IP

This solution is stable. 

Scalability is fine because it's batched upon endpoint devices, and licensing. If you max out the endpoint devices that you want to manage, you just upgrade the license and get more scalability. The core server is running on virtualization, so you can expand the resources for you to be able to grow your server needs.

We previously used Cisco ISE. We switched because it was complex. Even the deployment was not straightforward. When I had Cisco ISE, it was still in the first version, 1.2. I heard people mention that version 2.2 is much more friendly, easy to deploy, and easy to use but I didn't get a chance to test that. I used Cisco ISE when it was what I would consider a very complex solution, difficult to install, and even understand. Even then, it was not meeting my requirements.

The initial setup was straightforward and the deployment took almost a month. 

Cisco ISE V1

I would rate this solution a nine. 

We use this solution for controlling the security of our wireless network.

Aruba ClearPass has improved the security control in our network environment.

The most valuable feature for our network environment is the identification of discovered devices. 

Configuration should be more easy to understand between the link of two topics.

We used ClearPass for wireless 802.1x Authentication in a large campus deployment (more than 10,000 access points). 

We are also going to use it for our guest WiFi access solution. I would like to promote its use for wired network authentication as well.

• It eliminated the management of 10 different individual discrete RADIUS servers. 
• We are able to satisfy many different organizational needs because of its flexibility.

The ClearPass clustering model saved us staff time and reduced errors by eliminating the need to manage individual RADIUS servers. The mulit-vendor capability is also valuable.

The product's graphical user interface (GUI) could use an update and better integration between the guest management and policy management interfaces.

I'd also like to make sure there is support for Juniper switches.

It has been pretty stable, except sometimes when we go to upgrade to a different version - it hasn't been user-impacting - but we've had some issues.

We were using a different vendor's wireless infrastructure, and we switched to the Aruba platform - and ClearPass, that was part the package.

The most important criterion when selecting the vendor in this particular case was integration with a wireless infrastructure product because it was the same vendor.

There were two in total, Cisco and Aruba. We chose Aruba because their technical support was more responsive and knowledgeable than we had with Cisco.

Do a proof of concept. Actually get your hands on the product and don't just look at the brochure, the glossy about the product.

I rate it a nine out of 10 because it's done everything that we've been able to ask it to do.

We got rid of books after our third year of installing Aruba WiFi. Our educational delivery system is 99% online with the exception of a few AP classes dictated by the State. As IoT has started arriving on campus, the Aruba solution is already in place. 

ClearPass is the most valuable tool in my arsenal. It ties everything together: users, devices, IoT, mobile devices, guests, and networks. All of it.

It has an easy to learn web GUI and command lines.

• The AirWave Dashboard heat maps could be better designed. 
• Instructions on adding layouts are not as clear as they could be.

Every time I extend my environment: mobile device management, a dashboard to see all my switches, controllers, access points, devices, and users. Aruba has had the best solution. 

The support is top notch, expert, and very friendly. 

Cost is important. I switched because Aruba's costs were well below Cisco's. Aruba has outpaced Cisco in the marketplace and in performance.

I shopped six WiFi companies for a year before I decided on going with Aruba. Since then, I have replaced all of my Cisco products, with Aruba except the core, which I installed Juniper. This year Aruba has developed a premium core system, and we are putting it in. I like the fact Aruba has cloud or on-prem controllers. I like managing my own environments, so I use on-prem. 

We are an “Aruba House”.

OnBoard, OnGuard, SSO and IntroSpect UEBA, including Palo Alto integration. These are valuable from engineer to C-level executives, who want visibility, performance, statistics, and a platform which can take action for them without manual intervention, saving time and money.

Gives us network access control, visibility, scalability, security, and control in what is becoming an uncontrollable, inundated BYOD and IoT world.

Aruba is always finding better, innovative ways to make their products easier and more friendly. It is always being improved, but what I would like to see is “AAS”. Not only Aruba APs with central, but NAC/ClearPass, AirWave, and everything licensed as a Service. This way, like AWS, they can spin up what they need when they need it and vice versa.

None.

None.

Awesome tech support when needed. Each customer is given a customer number and TAC will follow through until all issues are resolved, whether it be a flaw in the product or a customer misconfiguration.

I did not personally use a previous solution.

Initial setup is straightforward. It is recommended to read the manual before implementation.

I provide straight answers. Licensing and pricing are extremely straightforward.

Run a 90 day free Proof of Concept (PoC) for each product by implementing and using it fully in your environment. This way you will be educated on its features, functionality, and manageability.

No.

ClearPass is the best Network Access Control "Swiss army knife" out there right now. It can do 802.1x (WPA2-Enterprise) for WiFi and LAN. It also has one of the slickest guest captive portal experiences and workflows out there, along with an easy, drop-in BYOD application.

I have not had too much experience with OnGuard, the endpoint integrity feature, but it does that too. With all of the ClearPass integrations and RADIUS Change of Authorization (CoA), it is possible to login wired or wireless endpoints based on a variety of identity stores, then create and associate security policies, e.g., DACLs, based on a device. 

Dynamically provision VLAN assignments, i.e., no more "color-coded ports", write Palo Alto Networks (PAN) NGFW policies that are associated with a specific user (rather than IP address), and quarantine or drop an endpoint off the network in an automated manner if an incident is detected.

All of this, naturally, comes with a lot of details in implementation, but my experience was, like all things InfoSec, implementing the controls is easy if you already have a clear, documented, executive-supported policy that you are using as the control to enforce. Otherwise, the control gets blamed for what is really a lack of clarity and leadership regarding the underlying business policy.

It makes it easy to require robust user authentication for both wired and wireless endpoints, including BYODs.

Access Tracker is definitely the feature that I use the most. It is invaluable for troubleshooting access control incidents and quickly getting to the root cause.

It should be clearer in the pre-sales stage that clear, documented, executive-supported InfoSec policy is the key to success.

All of the features work in concert to provide secure on-boarding for guests and bring-your-own-device users.

I implement this for other companies and they all greatly benefit. It's worked well in many sectors, such healthcare, financial, corporate, and transportation.

Helping streamline the setup and more in-depth tutorials would be helpful. The product is very complex and therefore the more info and tools that are available the better.

I've been using it for three years.

I feel the product is stable.

I feel the product is scalable.

Customer service is top notch.

Very technical. The techs always help until resolution and will escalate quickly when you ask.

It's the first AAA security product of its kind.

Whether the setup is straightforward or complex will depend on how you need to apply the product. It can be streamlined or be quite intricate.

I am the consultant who installs this for end-users.

Can come from the security or the ease of management it provides

It may be a little expensive or complex for very small clients.

It's very powerful, but the individual needs to have a lot of knowledge across several IT disciplines.