Meraki MS Switches Reviews

For our customers, there are multiple locations, around 3,500.

My configuration is to do the configurations on Cisco Meraki Dashboard. There are MS Avant switches, MS switches, MS routers, et cetera. Mostly, I work with all the switches, switch modems and routers, and access points also.

The switches are very stable. 

It's able to expand.

The product is easy to set up. 

Sometimes, when we plug the new switch into the internet, they will upgrade there and it'll take time. At times, we didn't know whether the switch was operating or not so we have to take the console and we have to do some troubleshooting. In the console, we can find out there if the Cisco Meraki switch is not connected with the Meraki cloud. 

The MG21 is not working on a 5G SIM card. It requires 4G SIM cards. Therefore, we are using two links, an internet broadband link and one for MG21 that is on SIM card based for small sites. We all suffer a lot of issues for MG21. 

I've been using the solution for five years. 

It is stable as a product. The solution is reliable. There aren't any bugs or glitches. 

It is a product that can scale. It's not a problem.

Typically, if I run into issues, I'd run them by my team lead. I don't reach out to Cisco directly. It's a good solution. We don't run into many issues. 

I previously used Cisco and HP switches. 

I've also used an Alcatel switch.

The solution is very straightforward, actually. It is not complex. This is a simple product to configure.

In terms of the ease of setup, I'd rate it a nine out of ten. 

I'm not familiar with the exact cost of the solution. 

Our organization has a partnership with Meraki.

It is a good product and it is scalable. It is not too complex in terms of configuration. It supports a lot of technology.

I'd rate the product eight out of ten. 

I am a Solutions Architect. I work in presales. We make projects with our customers and then provide the solutions. We position the MS Switches. If the company changes from 24 ports to 48, for example, I will see that. I am also aware of when licenses are renewed.

Meraki MS Switches are used with the PoE version together with an access point. The solution is most common in the access layer. 

My clients value the application visibility of this solution. For example, for the Layer 2 switch, our customers are able to see not only the wireless aspect, but its cloud management.

The price of Meraki MS Switches should come down, particularly for the Layer 3 switch, which is the most expensive switch. 

Because we have Wi-Fi 6, which is 2.5 or sometimes 5 Gigabits, we want the biggest ports in the lowest, entry-level switch. Sometimes we have to provision the equipment because there are some gaps.

I would like to see improvements to the dark mode in the next release, as I prefer the dark mode.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for more than four years.

The product is stable, however, after we closed the project, our clients reported that they had some problems. 

Meraki MS Switches is scalable. Buy the licenses, and then plug them into the network.

I require technical support when I need information regarding the product during presales. They meet my expectations and answer with clear and thorough information.

I would rate technical support a five out of five overall.

Positive

The initial setup of this cloud based solution is very easy.

Meraki MS Switches is easy to use and implement. The solution has good support, functions, and features.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.

I've got the appliances and I've got the switches and I've got the access points.

I have switches for the phones and the access points. I have standard switches for the network. However, I'm doing the layer-two switching. I don't do any additional programming on them. The advantage that I have with them is the user portal. I can find the endpoints by port. Therefore, if I need to control it, I can do it from the portal and shut a port down, however, I don't do any additional programming beyond layer two.

I like that I can patch and manage them remotely from the user portal. It's easy to patch and manage from anywhere.

The initial setup is easy.

I don't see any need for any improvements for my particular use case. 

They could lower the price.

At my latest company, we've used the solution for three years. However, I've worked with the product for seven years. 

In terms of stability. they're as good as any other switches I've used. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I don't know that you scale switches. You get them for whatever amount of ports they're on.

I have sites with 24 port switches and I have sites with 48 port switches. Their size is growing to meet the needs we have.

Before this, I had HP and Cisco and was actively buying HP switches. We switched, not that it is cheaper. I am required in our industry to always be on the current firmware. That would, in the past, require either working late hours or scheduling downtime to do those updates. Now I can schedule them for any time of the day in the off hours. It happens automatically. There wasn't much difference between any of the switches. 

It's a straightforward implementation. 

I just did plug-and-play.

I can maintain them from my desk. I'm a one-person shop. They are very easy to take care of.

For example, I can schedule patch management. The biggest concern is keeping them patched or updated so that the firmware is always current to avoid potential bad players or issues. I can schedule that and do that all from the console. I don't have to worry about staying up late at night to do it or taking it down in the middle of the day and scheduling downtime. In the middle of the night, I can say, "Patch it," and it'll be done.

The pricing is high and could be reduced. 

The initial cost is above HP and probably comparable to Cisco. HP, on their switches, still has a limited lifetime warranty. You buy it and you'll get support and replacement for the life of the switch. The maintenance on the Meraki is not that great. I buy it three years at a time. It's not a big number.

Visibility is part of the Meraki mindset or the culture. You manage your infrastructure from a single portal. I have visibility into what's going on from a single portal, and I can manage and update and maintain it from that single portal. I don't have to have multiple solutions. I don't have to log into the switches. Everything's managed from that single portal. It's great.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We are partners of Meraki and operate as a service provider for Meraki switches, notably the Meraki MS Series 410, 420, and 450. Our responsibility is to help customers deploy these solutions, which are always situated on-premises.

The main use cases for our customers include end-user connectivity, IP telephony, and security purposes such as for the cameras and access points.

The top feature of Meraki MS switches for me is Layer 7 application visibility. Another positive in general is that you don't need to set up a console to the switch itself; it dials in to a single dashboard where you can completely manage all your network devices.

In my opinion, there's room for improvement cost-wise. With Meraki's licensing terms, you're required to pay an annual licensing fee, which can be for a one-year license or perhaps a five-year license. But if you analyze the costs involved, there are huge expenses incurred as far as the licensing is concerned. It's very costly.

When you see the cost of the device and the cost of the license, they're almost the same. So let's say, for example, a device costs $4,200 and you go for a three or four year license, it will cost you the same. And that's for everything; for the wireless, the switches, the firewalls, everything.

Of course, the total costs depend on several factors, including the customer requirements, the service provider, and the service integrators (which may have their own partnership bias). With Cisco partners, there are gold level partners which will have different discounts to the silver partners, for instance. Given these factors, I always try to get the maximum discount from the vendor so I can offer a solution to my customers at the lowest margin.

Apart from costs, one improvement that I would like to see in terms of features concerns the mobile application. Most users of our switches are now on the web-based interface and I feel it's time for Meraki to start developing the mobile app more seriously, because it's currently not up to standard and a lot of people aren't using it.

I've been using Meraki MS Switches for about six to eight years.

For the cloud license model, the stability of the switches largely depends on your Internet capability. For example, you will want to have both primary and secondary backbone connections for the Internet, and that's it. The stability of the hardware is fine.

I would say that it's scalable, especially in the sense that there are models up to at least 10 Mbps and at the upper range there are 10 Gbps copper switches. Then there are switches that support 1 Gbps fiber as well as 40 Gbps fiber (via QSFP). Thus, there are enough models to offer the scalability that you need as far as bandwidth is concerned.

There are fixed-model switches and also some older model switches to choose from, so it depends upon the customer's requirements to decide on their own solution. When it comes to scalability, there are various options available. 

Cisco is always top-notch when it comes to technical support. It's reassuring to know that they will be there to assist you in solving your issues. Of course, there are sometimes priority cases, but even then they make sure to be available to help you resolve the issue. It doesn't matter if you're a customer, a partner, or a service provider, they provide an excellent technical support service.

Positive

The setup is very easy. It's typically a one-touch provisioning process and it's like not traditional switches where you have to put in a lot of effort bringing the switch up and running with a basic configuration. With Meraki switches, all you need is a status page where you can log in locally. As soon as you connect it to the Internet, the device is on board and on the cloud, and you can start playing around with it.

You don't need a lot of technical staff to implement the switches. One engineer is capable of doing it alone and, in fact, most of the time it just takes a single team member to deploy. Naturally, this would be an individual who knows the product inside and out, to be able to deploy without anyone's help. You also need a few remote hands who can rack and stack the equipment, but as far as the configuration is concerned, only one engineer can do everything.

I had one scenario where I had 120 devices divided into three different models. Four of them were Layer 3 fiber switches which acted as the core switches and 16 of them were fiber switches for distribution, also with Layer 3 capability. Then we had almost a hundred devices acting as access switches, which is normally Layer 2 PoE-capable switches where we have a couple of SFP ports for the uplink. All of this a single person would be able to deploy in five working days, at eight hours a day.

When it comes to maintenance, it depends on the size of the infrastructure. In a retail mall, for example, you will have hardly 150 switches, compared to a big hotel or apartment building where you will have more than 200-300 switches. With those kinds of deployments, you will have to have multiple people to address the multiple issues with the guests.

There is a lot of scope for ROI with Meraki, mainly because your headcount will go down. With Meraki switches, you don't need to have too many people around to manage the infrastructure, and you don't have to travel much to maintain multiple branches across the globe.

Additionally, you won't need to spend much in terms of reporting tools, log tools (e.g. log collectors), or anything like that because everything is included in the product. There's a lot of sophistication and features that Meraki brings in terms of Layer 7 application visibility. You really have complete control over the end-users infrastructure.

If you buy a license for one switch, it will include the licensing for the device RMA, device failure warranty, technical support, and everything else. Also covered is support for software updates for future releases. It's a single license for everything and there's nothing that customers need to pay in addition to the license.

I would rate Meraki MS Switches an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for switching delivery. It's quite basic. It provides connectivity. They are ethernet switches.

We like the ability to perform data capture and open it with Wireshark in case of issues.

For me, the best functionality is provided by Meraki for any device. The ability to manage the devices for the dashboard online, from the online dashboard. It is great.

The product is very straightforward. 

The stability of the product is very good. 

The switch capacity needs to be improved. Today we deploy some MS switches for the data center. Previously, it was a small data center and we get the most powerful device into the portfolio of Meraki to respond to this subject. However,  it could be great to have a better capacity with 10 gigs or 40 gigs, for example.

As a physical device, it's not extremely scalable.

We started to resell Meraki devices to our customers around 2016. It's been around six years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

The product is not scalable. It's a physical device and therefore limited. 

It's possible when you have virtualization, for example. For VMX, maybe, by the deployment VMX by Terraform and configuration automation, it's possible. However, with the physical devices, and so the switches, with the stack, we have scalability with the ports, with the interfaces, through a new device. I did it to the stack, however, globally, the solution, it's not as scalable as it could be. However, it's just due to the fact that it is a physical device.

The support is very good. We are very satisfied with the technical support we get. They always resolve the issues we have.

Positive

I'm also familiar with Juniper or Huawei. The main differences between them are the facility to configure or deploy, and ease of use. Meraki is a real plug-and-play solution. That's why it's really good. With Juniper in particular you do need strong skills to get the most out of it. 

It's a straightforward setup. It's not overly difficult. That's why we continue to use Meraki. I'd rate the product four out of five. 

The deployment is very quick. It takes only a few seconds to a few minutes. It's very fast. We have developed some API applications to automate the configuration and deployment without using the dashboard. We only need to put up a .CSV file and everything is done automatically. 

It is a good solution, however, it is quite expensive. I'd rate the cost at a three out of five. You do have to pay for the license, however, the licensing is quite expensive. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. We are quite satisfied with the solution genera. 

We use mobile device management to track our wireless access points, and that's basically what it does for our environment.

It makes the management of SSIDs fairly easy. It's pretty intuitive. I haven't used anything else to manage stuff, so I don't know what other things are out there.

I don't like some of the mobile device management options. They're a little bit hard to find in the system.

I've used the solution for six years. 

It's a stable product. I don't see too much going on with it. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable. 

I didn't have an opportunity to use another switch. We've been using this since I've worked with the system.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. I adopted the system. I did not go through the deployment.

We have seen an ROI. It's very good.

The pricing is okay. I'd rate the solution a three and a half or four out of five in terms of cost, five being the most expensive. 

We're just customers and end-users, not partners or resellers.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. 

I would suggest new users get a really good understanding of the network requirements before implementation.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

It's a cloud-managed, stackable access switch. It has various features, like providing quality of service to prioritize critical traffic, such as voice and video. It has various levels of support for simplified voice deployment. We also use this switch for multicast traffic. In addition, we use the switch for high capacity trunking where we require link aggregations. 

This switch is enabled with network security features. We use it for port security and MAC whitelisting, as well as DHCP snooping to prevent users from adding unauthorized DHCP servers to the network. The switch supports BPDU guard, root guard, and rapid spanning tree protocol for the loop prevention mechanism.

Moreover, now with the advent of automation in our environment, the switch supports various automation testing tools, and it's quite helpful for network troubleshooting as well.

The switch has a good speed and low latency. I will not say it's the market leader of low latency, but it competes with Arista switches in terms of latency. 

It is a compact switch, so there are a limited number of ports, and it needs improvement in terms of scalability. The number of ports should be increased. I would love to see modular capabilities, and various security features, like the ones provided by Palo Alto and various emerging cybersecurity solutions. I would like this switch to match that level of competency.

This switch is robust. It's never, ever gone down. It has not been rebooted during the last two years in my environment. In terms of stability, I don't see any challenges. I haven't seen any bugs associated with the current IOS. 

It is a scalable solution, but compared to competitors' technology, I still see some gaps. There are a lot of scalability improvements needed in this particular model.

There are 500+ on-prem users. Counting business employees altogether though, there are about 2,000. 

The support is quite easy and handy. No one can compete with Cisco's tech support.

The initial setup was very straightforward. I have been in the IT industry for the last 16 years so I didn't have any challenges with the configuration or deployment. It is a plug and play solution, and needs basic configuration during the initial setup. We pushed the configuration and provisioned this switch immediately. 

I see a return on investment in terms of manageability because a single employee can easily manage the switch. I don't need to hire additional resources for taking care of the vulnerability assessment or anything else.

I don't know the exact price, but in terms of comparison, I know that Extreme switches are more cost-effective than Cisco Meraki Switches. Cisco should have some switches that are more cost-effective.

There are some other competitors nowadays, like Extreme switches. They are cost-effective and have many security features embedded in the switches. We want to see that level of competency for modular capabilities in Meraki switches soon. I still see Cisco as the market leader because no one can compete with Cisco's fast tech support.

To someone considering this solution I would say that compared to other switches, like Arista, Meraki switches are quite robust. In terms of performance, we haven't faced any issues or vulnerabilities in the last two years. 

I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

We use this solution as a switch.

The features are great.

It's scalable. The expandability and ease of use are excellent. 

We like how easy the manageability is. 

The evolution of the product was also quite good. It's always getting better and better. 

It's very easy to set up.

This product is stable. The reliability is great.

Its troubleshooting features need work. They could adopt a console approach that could be more helpful.

If they offered more advanced management features, that would be useful. It is a cloud service; for example, if I were about to buy such a product, I would be very concerned about having cloud management for my switches. Anyone can have access from all over the world, and you can reload the switches from everywhere. That's fine. However, security is a bit of a concern for the cloud.

I've used the solution for the last five years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale well. It's not a problem at all. I've seen the evolution, and the scalability potential is one of the things that makes it more competitive than other products.

This product can work for both smaller and quite large organizations. 

I've been working with Cisco for years now, so technical support was always something that turned us on to solutions with Cisco. We are pretty satisfied.

I've also worked with Fortinet as well as Cisco. 

The solution is quite simple and straightforward. It's not hard to set up.

I'm not sure of the pricing. It's not an aspect I deal with directly. 

If I compare it with Fortinet switches or HPE switches. Overall, the benefits that you gain with the ease of use and the manageability with Meraki are good. Also, many products from other companies are more unstable. That's one of the reasons why our first choice was Catalyst Switches.

I've worked with various Meraki solutions - not just switches. I've used access points, firewalls, etc. 

I'd recommend the solution is problem-free for the most part. However, the cost needs to be taken into account, and new users should work to calculate costs before agreeing to buy. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I'm a customer and end-user.