Hello, We've had Aruba for several years now and are very happy with them.
We have 5 M3's, 1 Master 4 Locals, ~800 AP's (could do it with 3 M3's, history there...) the Master acts as a failover for the locals. We don't have redundancy on the Master at this time. Would like to, but at the same time, hasn't been an issue and the Locals run just fine if the Master drops out (Just can't make changes until you get the Master replaced or re-configure one of the Locals). We originally had SC-1 controllers, the M3 was a big improvement speed wise and the upgrade was straight forward. We started with AP 60's originally, over last few years have gone to a mixture of AP105's and AP125's. Both work great, We use the 105's for horizontal/ceiling and 125's for vertical mounts. The 105 can go vertical, but it's not optimal, the 125 can go either way. Just got our first batch of 135's, neat. (Also have some 175 Outdoor units we are testing). The bulk of our 105's are in the ResHalls, and they are surviving quite well. :) Support has been great, we typically jump on the bleeding edge of the code (Just went to 6.1.2.2), and TAC along with the local sales/engineering team are great to work with and eager to help. We had a big "Bake Off" several years ago with 22 other campuses within California (CSU system has 23 campuses, pretty independent with unique requirements / priorities), it was a pretty big effort, Aruba came out the clear winner. The top vendors had pretty similar feature sets that we needed, but Aruba matched everyone else and had those extra nuggets (PEF, Remote AP's, ARM, etc), and was cheaper than the comparable competition. The Aruba team / company presented well, and you could tell they had some passion for what they were doing, they were excited about the product and their capabilities / futures. Policy Enforcement Firewall ROCKS. Lots of ability to control the environment, not just inbound / outbound traffic, but user/vlan management, various protections against attacks, etc. PEF is well worth it if you need the flexibility and security. You could get by without it if you have a pretty static/simplistic design / needs, but I'd get it being a University, nothing is every simplistic. ;) Just getting started with 6.1.2.2 and fingerprinting hosts, but we also use SafeConnect/Impulse for NAC, they have a great integration with Aruba and right now we let them handle the console identification issues. We are in the process of the Aruba integration, so it's not deployed yet on wireless, still working on our deployment design, etc. We currently have SafeConnect in use for our wired ResHall network. Overall, very happy with Aruba, they have worked well, starting with the migration from our Legacy system (Thick Cisco 350's/1200's), to incorporation of new features and abilities with new firmware. Oh, almost forgot, great user community (AirHeads), and an equally great users conference, its small/focused on wireless, and the product leads are their along with the engineers, etc. Hope that helped, happy to chat more if you'd like any additional information. Carl Oakes Network Architect California State University Sacramento [email protected] ________________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kellogg, Brian D. [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 6:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Aruba Looking for thoughts on Aruba for the following: M3 controller 105 APs How is their support? What were the differentiators with Aruba that led to your institution choosing them over others? Stability of firmware in APs and controller? If we choose Aruba we most likely will not be able to afford a redundant controller so this is important for us. Overall satisfaction with the Aruba solution? Do you find the Policy Enforcement Firewall worth the price? Are you using it to identify gaming stations and allowing limited access for them successfully? thanks again, Brian ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. Information Services (including the HelpDesk) will NEVER ask for your password or other personal data via email. Messages requesting such details are fraudulent. DELETE THEM WITHOUT REPLY. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
