What is our primary use case?
It allows us to steer the traffic into two parallel links.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of this solution are load balancing and the security possibilities you have.
What needs improvement?
Meraki is more or less an intelligent load balancing. A lot of features are missing that other SD-WAN solutions have. For example, forward error correction and WAN optimization. These features are missing.
The best thing would be if you could have more than two uplinks in the Meraki Gateways. Also, forward error correction would be nice to have.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately a year and a half.
We are using the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are a small company. We have approximately 120 users.
With Meraki, you have only two WAN links. You cannot have more than that.
You can scale it very easily if you want to have thousands of locations, but in every location or with every Meraki WAN gateway, you can only have two WAN uplinks.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have not contacted technical support, it's always perfect.
Cisco's technical support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is quite simple.
We are a training company that provides training on Meraki. It's a matter of minutes to implement an SD-WAN router.
We have a team that is responsible for maintaining this solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If you purchase a Meraki gateway, you have to purchase a license. It's a basic license, and you will have SD-WAN included.
When you buy a Meraki gateway, you already have SD-WAN.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When comparing Meraki SD-WAN with other SD-WAN solutions, Meraki is more or less for free. It's an easy to use solution that helps you to do things that you can't do without SD-WAN.
It is not as advanced as the Cisco SD-WAN solution, or SD-WAN solutions from other vendors.
It does not have a very rich feature set.
What other advice do I have?
For others who are interested in using Meraki SD-WAN, I would suggest that they know the limitations of the two uplinks and that it is not a separate solution. It's included in what you have. You will not have the same dashboard as you would have with the Cisco SD-WAN, or VeloCloud, VersaStack, etc.
For a free solution, I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Cisco Learning Partner