Aruba Wireless Reviews

The most valuable aspects are its security and analytical capabilities.

I think when it comes to wireless the industry has changed a lot. When it comes to wireless, the industry has changed a lot and with connectivity everyone uses the same chips and really the same hardware so the quality of radio is very similar for every vendor.

Aruba have put a lot of emphasis on manageability and security, and I think their Airwave and Clearpath products are head and shoulders the best in the industry. They let their customers deploy a wireless network and manage and secure it better than you can do with all other solutions.

The next step is to create better unified story with HP switching. They're part of the same competitor, and their main competitor, Cisco, has a great unified wired/wireless story, and Aruba need to focus on this. They have great management tools and security capabilities, and they need to extend that to the wireless network.
Also, they need to enable the data they collect to be used by more companies. If you think of where wireless is big - schools, hospitals, retail environments - it would be good to capture that data and share it with third-parties so they can enhance their customers' experience.

It's amongst the best in the industry. It's used by lots of small companies but also by some of the largest companies in the world, and there's only a couple of vendors who can be multi-thousand user wireless deployments, and Aruba's one of them. They have a rock solid solution.

It's highly scalable, and I like the way they have orientated their portfolio. They have a configuration called 'Instant' where you don't actually need a controller, you can just start with a couple of access points and get it at relatively low cost. As you scale it out, you can add more access points, and one or two controllers, and manage it through the cloud. So almost any configuration the customer wants they can do, and as it gets larger, you can bring in the management tools. It's not like some solutions where you have to rip it out to go larger.

I think it's great. I've never heard a customer complain and they get you on the phone with an engineer quickly. Obviously it's very focused on wireless so you're not going to be calling them for a wide range of problems. For the solution, they're very good.

It's easy to get going. You can take an access point out of the box and have it running in minutes.

It's been the tech leader in the wireless market for a long time, which is why HP paid so much for them. Using the product is very simple, and there are lots of features unique to them. If you're going to purchase it - and you will pay a premium so it will cost more - take advantage of the security features, management tools, and analytical features.

The main reason I chose to implement the HP WLC was due to the limitations of our previous Sonicwall WLC not being able to have layer three provisioning. I would say that feature is the most valuable.

With our old wireless network, we had to put controllers at every location to have wireless access. This product allowed us to have one controller at our central location and still provide wireless to our outlying clinics.

The user interface on the product isn’t terribly intuitive in some areas, especially when setting up VSC’s.

I've been using HP MSM 720 Mobility Controller and 40 HP since April 2014, so approximately 10 months.

I experienced a few issues while deploying the controller. Getting the product to work correctly with a back end RADIUS server proved to be a bit of a task and the lack of documentation didn’t help either.

Stability wise the product has been fairly rock solid. I can’t think of any time I have had to even reboot it since I implemented it.

The particular model (MSM 720) doesn’t provide much in terms of scalability. It only allows for 40 Access Points which my company has about that number.

Customer service on the phone I would rate fairly poorly. On more than one occasion I could not understand the agent or would get disconnected, however, online customer service is much better.

I have only used the HP forums for technical support and it has a pretty good following and a lot of knowledgeable users.

We previously used a Sonicwall NSA3500 for all our needs. We switched due to the lack of Layer three provisioning at the time plus I wasn’t a fan of one device controlling so many aspects of our network and security.

I would say complex, mainly due to the lack of good documentation. All together, it took me about a week to fully get the product in a production state. Coming from a Cisco background it seemed much more cumbersome than their products.

We used an in house team (me).

I am not sure of the ROI at the moment. It has not been implemented long enough for any significant ROI.

Original setup cost for this implementation was around $30,000. Day-to-day the product costs nothing.

Any time we have a project we must have three viable options to choose from. We looked at HP, Cisco and Meru.

• Have a strong knowledge of your internal network
• Study the manual as much as possible
• Focus on VSC’s and Vlan configuration
• If you come from a Cisco background keep in mind you won’t use an access port on the switch port connected to the AP like you would in a Cisco WLC setup, but instead either a trunk or tagged port

It's simple to use.

The reliability could be improved.

I have been using this solution for five years.

The stability could be improved. 

The solution is scalable.

One a scale of one to five, I would give their technical support a two. It could be better.

Setup is straightforward.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. 

My advice is that if you don't have experience, you should find a partner for support rather than rely on the company.

We have about 30 APs and a lot of sites with centralized management on controller 7030. We use it to control the network in standalone mode and handle the active and standby modes.

All features are useful for me. It lets me perform some specific configurations depending on the site or the client. All WAN features are valuable.

Their documentation needs to be improved. Aruba's documentation is poor.

I have been using Aruba Wireless Controllers for about a year.

Its stability is okay. There is no issue with stability.

Its scalability is okay.

Their support is good. When I need to open a case, I get a fast response. I can contact the technician immediately. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

I also use Cisco solutions. Both solutions are very good and suitable for different kinds of networks. Cisco is very good for certain kinds of networks, and Aruba is good for other kinds. Cisco is simpler to deploy, whereas Aruba is more complicated and complex to deploy.

The initial setup was very complex because we deployed a new controller in a small network. It is useful for large networks, but for small networks, it is very difficult to understand all the models. If you don't use Mobility Master, the configuration and deployment are very complex. It took us six months to deploy it.

We got help from a third-party vendor, not Aruba. They were okay. We didn't have any problem.

You should know about the topology of the Aruba Wireless solution. It is very important because it depends on the size of the network. Otherwise, you might end up buying something that's not adequate for large networks.

I would rate Aruba Wireless an eight out of ten.

Aruba Wireless' network is the primary connection method used for connectivity to the university network. We use a master/local setup of controllers. On each of the three campuses we have two local controllers supporting the wireless network.

Wireless affords people the ability to stay connected. Mobility allows people the freedom to move about and not rely on being tied to an Ethernet cable only.

Cost reduction in wiring would be one valuable feature. Another would be the freedom of not being tethered to a cable. Mobility is a major plus. It takes a little time to learn and understand the tree and leaf hierarchy but is easy to manage once understood.

Sometimes you are not able to get an engineer on the phone on first call. There have been instances of waiting for a callback.

I would rate this product at nine out of 10. Aruba provides great service when a call is placed for assistance. One drawback for me is the language barrier. Sometimes it is a little difficult to understand the technician on the phone.

Aruba's good. It's almost over-complicated for what we need it for.

Aruba gives me the security that I need because we have WiFi for employees, and the public. It allows me to monitor them and block them or do whatever I need to to keep them in check.

It's a little bit over-complicated. They could simplify the interface. Also, the update procedure from their website could be a little better. Finding the firmware the first time is a pain.

They're good. As long as you have the right controller in place to have enough APs for your business, then it's great. You can stack them. They're just a good product.

You just plug them in, and once you get them configured, they're great from there.

The licensing could always be a little bit cheaper. Everybody complains about that, but you just plug them in and I rarely have to think about it and that's the product I want.

I looked at Cisco and I can't remember the other vendor. Once again, Cisco was price-point was higher. Aruba gave me every feature I needed and more so they were a good fit for us.

Make sure you know how many APs you want to throw up there. Remote APs, stuff like that, and size your controller properly, but not for now but five or six years in advance because you don't want to replace it every other year so that'll be my biggest piece of advice.

Aruba is the only other wireless vendor besides Cisco that offers the flexibility of using AP's in any combination of the 3 controller-based architectures.

Lots of Flexibility but with flexibility comes complexity. Flexibility is great for large organizations but the Aruba instant AP may be good for smaller organizations.

I have worked with Aruba gear for 4 years.

Any issues I encountered were resolved quickly with an excellent TAC.

Aruba has a very scalable product with different hardwar, software and complementary products such as AirWave and ClearPass.

TAC is really a 9+

I have worked with other great vendors like Cisco, Meraki, Motorola, etc.

There are ways to sidestep the complexity available with Aruba, but if you do not need the advanced features of Aruba then Aruba instant or another vendor may suit your needs best.

The Wireless integration with ClearPass Policy Manager to give a complete BYOD solution is absolutely the key to today's business requirements. I am sure there is a lot more they can achieve but by far they have been quite innovative in the market.

There are a lot of features that are quite unique to the product. The products from Aruba Network cater for a wide range of organizations, from media companies like BBC, to IT Companies like Microsoft and lots of universities see a perfect fit for their requirements. As an IT Network implementer I can easily see how this product fits the bill for many questions asked by companies today to embrace the future of IT Devices and personal devices at work.

This is an ever growing industry and there are lots of new features that are being requested on a daily basis by different companies, partners and suppliers.

I have used it since 2007, about eight years.

Like any other product there are a few challenges that need to be overcome as most of the organizations have a heterogeneous network. Aruba products can happily sit over your existing network without making a large change to the way the network works. This is the best bit about Aruba Networks.

The product development team is quite good to fix any issues. Considering the large variety of devices and network cards that Aruba has to cater for the number of issue faced have not been significant. They also get a fix out quite quickly before the issue turns into a major problem.

It is a very scalable product. The new centralized licensing and the newer controller models have made scalability even easier.

7/10.

Technical support is one of the strong areas for Aruba and I would rate it as 8/10.

Cisco has always been a close competitor to Aruba Networks but Cisco is much bigger than just wireless hence I think Aruba does justice to what they have to offer and are focused on Wi-Fi only.

The setup is quite straightforward. The solutions can be deployed based on best practices.

The support for implementation both from supplier and vendor is great. The installation definitely takes some ground work and preparation in-house but once it’s all sorted as per the design the product can be fully configured in a couple of days’ time.

I think the ROI is great if it is going to replace the wired environment, but it is not going to descale the wired environment then it needs a bit of a hard sell to meet the ROI.

This is a very subjective question and has many dependencies like the level of discount you can achieve will contribute largely to the initial cost and the everyday running cost is dependent on how many changes or enhancement you want to make at regular basis.

We also looked at Cisco Wireless products.

It is a great product and if you want complete control over your network for wireless users this is definitely the product you should choose.