Ryan, I used to work for a vendor that built/sold switching, wireless, and telephony equipment (not Cisco but a competitor). I was on the post sales side of the business working issues through technical support. When we had a situation with a customer like you are describing, especially dealing with multiple issues, we set up conference calls that included the customer, the account team, and a representative from the company’s Technical Support team who owned the trouble ticket, plus someone from the group working the bug issues. If necessary we did it on multiple days of the week (depending on severity of the issue) so that the customer would be able to hear from the guys working the bug(s) as to what was going on and how it was being addressed. At a minimum it was once a week and every outstanding issue that was being worked was documented and reported on. My feeling was that if the customer could hear what was being done to solve the issue, it may not alleviate all the frustrations but give them a chance to vent to the guys who were knee deep in the code plus add some additional detail that could be helpful in solving the issue. I was wondering if Aruba had offered you guys anything like. I would think with your university brand and influence, they would want to do everything in their power to keep you as a customer.
Don Sullivan Network Administrator 205-726-2111 Technology Services Samford University From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Turner, Ryan H Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 2:35 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? We are on 8.5.0.3 for the ITS cluster. We were going to upgrade to 8.0.0.5, but we had a disaster in one of our data centers just before the holidays. Power was tripped for a 13,000 sq foot data center. For some reason, APs associated to the controller in this building did not fail over to the other site. We are going to be testing this scenario again next week by yanking the power to confirm if we’ve hit yet another bug, or if this was a one-off. Ryan From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Steve Fletty Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 1:20 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? What version of 8.5? We saw some issues in our lab prior to 8.5.0.4. We have a mix of 335s and 535s. On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 10:15 AM Turner, Ryan H <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: All: We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access points. While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor. The biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider appropriate to use in production. It has been one thing after the other, and my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to solve bugs. Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up. The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train. We have them deployed in one of our IT buildings. Periodically, people that are connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working. To the user, they are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive. If they are on their phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell. Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve. Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band). We’ve been working on this problem with them for months. It always seems as though we have to prove there is a real issue. I’m fed up with it. We are a sophisticated shop. If we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem. I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus. To Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around February). When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought back half of them. I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the time the 315s ran out. Not looking to be the case. So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon). There are other bugs I’m not even mentioning here. For those of you that made the switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your motivators, and were you happy with the overall results? Of course, this is a great opportunity to plug your vendor. As I see it, we have 3 choices…. Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), something from Juniper (Mist). Thanks, Ryan Turner Head of Networking The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +1 919 445 0113 Office +1 919 274 7926 Mobile [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community<https://secure-web.cisco.com/1hVI8GGxC_AakazCyBGp2mnRtsbSV124wYrn7UZN_RgudSa5gacRU12OYWKqZ9OuUe-LfbRWsOByGm1Wl0PtvpU70UA-9XxbUPyShT6_PtHyjXeyQHu0WA6VUoyZRtknOqKU9FlML_vx2D9XfEp7PvUffa1zNbLz3GK0qmpLf7bB5C4dNdb-0GBgZnLMoSiU-oZlVL-q6NwVLKpvVqLHvyTbq6402PRmhnCWA2xw6tPt5Q_0t4WCkkxcYgYJURej1YXUGx0mnO1ha7RRrT3nbaMH6KTVGbJC3_0G1Rv77WVYQcsRtCe92C2aZypii-PjspuYVqLFR7uKE5HIyzf8NVA/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.educause.edu%2Fcommunity> -- Steve Fletty Network Engineer Office of Information Technology (OIT) University of Minnesota Phone: 612-625-1048 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. 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