I would agree with this, generally Aruba TAC are OK, they do have some bad 1st line engineers, but once you get past 1st line they are usually OK. If you can get an escalation to the ERT guys, then they tend to be really good.
We have around 450 AP's and currently run 8.5.0.4 and have rolled out around 60 AP515's with another 40 to go. So far we haven't experienced these issue, but we run the 515's with ax functionality disabled. For those people with issues do your problems still persist when you disable 'High efficiency Mode' in the wireless system profile? I saw that the first release of 8.6 code appeared briefly over Xmas but looks to have been pulled again - hopefully that will have some performance improvements, though if TAC have been unable to find the root cause then it may just be hope.... Martin -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jeffrey Mesch Sent: 09 January 2020 20:06 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? I really think this is the key factor in this...how the vendor (and reseller if applicable) responds and the relationship overall. We're a tiny school, just 500 students. For +5 years we've had a great relationship with arguably one of HP/Aruba's top engineers in the state. General Motors headquarters is on his list of responsibilities. Despite being so small he'd give us as much time as he gave GM. Despite the relationship, we went with Mist for wireless because of their innovation and problems with a couple Aruba resellers. We hit some snags with Mist, and now both the local reseller and Mist/Juniper engineers won't give us the time of day. Level 1 support is good, but beyond that we've basically been on our own. In hindsight I've wondered if our results may have been better had we stuck with Aruba because of the well-established relationship. In general we tend to have more success with vendors/resellers where there's a solid existing relationship. +++Jeff On 1/9/20 1:42 PM, Patrick McEvilly wrote: > I agree with you, all vendors will have bugs and it's how the vendor > responds is what matters. Our experience on how Aruba handles them > has been nothing but positive. > > We have found our fair share of bugs on Aruba and yes some of them > probably should not have been found by customers. The > support/response from Aruba has always been top notch. Usually within > 24 hours of reporting the bug the issue has been identified and the > fix is in the next release. We do allow our SE remote access into our > infrastructure which helps with not draining our own resources while > working to resolve these problems. Our Aruba SE takes care of > reporting the bugs and gets them prioritized for us so for the most > part we are hands off when dealing with Aruba support. > > *From: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv > <[email protected]> on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" > <[email protected]> > *Reply-To: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv > <[email protected]> > *Date: *Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM > *To: *"[email protected]" > <[email protected]> > *Subject: *Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? > > From my standpoint, it really isn't about having bugs. They will all > have them. Its how the vendor handles the request when it comes in. > > Extreme is a very good example of this. While we have bugs, I know I > can escalate it all the way to the C level of executives if I don't > think an issue is getting handled quickly. If I tell them a bug is > critically important, then very soon we are on the call with a 10+ > developers/coders/executives working to fix the problem. While not > everything has been perfect, I know that if I tell Extreme something > is important, things get resolved. I feel as though I've had to > complain so much in the past two years over issues that I've become > chicken little. It should be obvious to an executive team monitoring > an account that when you have significant bugs exceed 2-3 months, the > wagons need to be circles. It doesn't seem to be automatic. > > So, in short, its not always the existence of bugs that is the problem. > It is the company's response to the problem. > > Ryan > > *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv > <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Jeffrey D. Sessler > *Sent:* Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:56 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? > > Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago > the Aruba folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various > unresolvable problems with Aruba AP's, including one that required a > weekly reboot of a particular model. > > As Lee mentions, the grass isn't always greener, so expect that you're > going to run into issues with any vendor. As such, it's going to come > down to support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor. > Startups are great as they have a single product with a single > code-train, so they tend to be pretty responsive at the start. Once > they have a few years under their belt, and their code base starts to > fragment, you'll get to the same point you have with the big > incumbents i.e. too many code bases to support effectively. > > Jeff > > *From: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv > <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > *Date: *Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:15 AM > *To: *[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > *Subject: *[WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? > > 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. 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