I've been an Aruba customer for a long time now and while I'm still happy, I see what you're saying. In my opinion, a lot of issues started here;
https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Wireless-Access/Updates-to-Aruba-Release-Naming-Replacing-ED-and-GA/td-p/279651 When they changed how the software was classified, "stable" and "be careful" got very blurry. Then the rush to get 8 out and in peoples hands made it a lot worse. I sympathize, they're trying to support 2 families of code now (8 and everything else). There's too much still on 6 to really kill it, and they need 8 to be adopted to get the testing to really make it stable. The last couple years have seen a very fast paced code release pace and I worry that they're getting too deep in the mud. It feels like 8.x and the 5xx hardware were rushed, or under-tested. While it's frustrating and can cause some issues, I still trust them to get it worked out, I just hope their reputation isn't too badly hurt while they sort everything. If you're considering them, I would still recommend their products, and once 8.x is really stable, things will get boring (stable) again :). My experience with their support and sales teams have not suffered at all, and I'm looking forward to what comes next. Good luck! [The Culinary Institute of America] Robert Harris Manager - Telecom, Networks, & AV Services Culinary Institute of America 1946 Campus Drive Hyde Park, NY 845-451-1681 www.ciachef.edu<http://www.ciachef.edu/> Food is Life Create and Savor Yours.(tm) Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Turner, Ryan H Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM To: [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. 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 ********** 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
