The vast majority of discussions about Meraki are about their WiFi AP's-i'm looking for feedback on their switches and firewalls.
My team has inherited IT but we are really more web server, database guys than the network stack. But to support a 50 person company i'm sure we can get the job done with a little outside help. We are ready to toss out the unmanaged switches (1x48, 2x24 in one office) and (1x24 in a second) and get managed gear so we have some insight and control of things.
What I'm hoping for is to pay a consultant to give us their expertise on vendors: VLANs, QoS for VOIP, VPNs, etc... I would like to pay them to then configure it all, give us training and documentation then mostly go away. Our main office is in the Colorado mountains so come wintertime it might be impossible to get a Cisco certified person in so I really want something straightforward to manage and troubleshoot. I fully expect to need to hire the consultant back to help as needed but if Sally's VOIP phone stops connecting I don't want to have to have a consultant trot out to bust out their command line expertise. I'm expecting a GUI to be available.
For the firewall I need dual WAN and would prefer HA but can live without for the right gear.
I've been reading through Spiceworks all week and have discussed things with a bay area company that specializes in this work. Based on what I've read here I told them I was especially interested in those that seem more user friendly, Sophos, Untangle and Meraki. I agreed to consider Cisco Small Business.
The consultants I've talked to really push the Cisco small business line for switches and the Fortinet or Sonicwall gear for firewalls. They have a poor assessment of Meraki - The cloud configuration is slow, sometimes did not work well and added unnecssary complication to what should not be complicated. Their networking guru 'was clear we should avoid this brand'. They also agreed the ASA line provides the functionality we need but don't fit our remote management needs.
I have seen two negative comments regarding the Meraki MX devices (three if you count the ones that flag they don't support HA on these very expensive devices). One was that it was very difficult to troubleshoot VPN issues when the dashboard is green because you cannot get into the details through their interface. The other was a vague complaint that although the switches are great the firewalls were (to paraphrase) 'put in a closet because they were hurried to market and are not ready'.
The Meraki gear with five year plans of support are about triple what Cisco Small business runs.
I have read lots of posts about how cool Meraki stuff sounds and looks. I'm looking for folks that are happy or unhappy with their decision to deploy both Meraki MX and MS lines and the Cisco small business switches. The Fortinet gear actually seems fine, but remote management of network gear is a huge plus for me as neither office has full time person from my department.