Ethan, We have a solid Aruba deployment for ~5,000 APs and ~40 controllers. In terms of cost, definitely anticipate licensing costs. However, Aruba recently combined much of their feature set into the base OS and/or 1 or 2 licenses. To get the most of your deployment, you'll definitely want the Policy Enforcement Firewall license (PEF) and if you have a need for IDS capabilities, you'll want the Wireless Intrusion Protection license (WIP). Both of those licenses are sold in terms of number of APs, so you'd be looking at getting a couple controllers, 200+ APs, AP licenses, PEF licenses, and WIP licenses.
We played with Meraki a bit. It works. It isn't as applicable for a deployment of our size, but it may be a good solution depending on ROI. Good luck on your decision! ========== Ryan Holland Network Engineer, Wireless Office of the Chief Information Officer The Ohio State University 614-292-9906 holland....@osu.edu On Apr 2, 2010, at 2:21 PM, Ethan Sommer wrote: > We are considering replacing our 200+ AP wireless infrastructure with a > controller based 802.11n system. > > I believe we have narrowed it down to Aruba, HP Procurve (we use HP switch > gear), and Meraki. > > I have two questions: > > 1. Are there any hidden costs we should watch out for with any of these > (particularly Aruba.) Will we hit major costs other than the up front cost > for the APs and the controllers? > > 2. I know a lot of schools are very happily using Aruba, but I haven't heard > of any schools using HP and very few using Meraki. > > Are there any schools who have gone with Aruba and regretted it? If so, why? > > Are there any schools out there using HP Procurve (formerly Colubrius) or > Merkai? What do you think of them? Did you have any surprises after you > deployed? > > > Ethan > > -- > Ethan Sommer > Associate Director of Core Services > 507-933-7042 > somm...@gustavus.edu > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > > > -- > BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS > ------------------------------------------------------ > > Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 1020786410) is spam: > Spam: https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=1020786410&m=a10512335d01&c=s > Not spam: https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=1020786410&m=a10512335d01&c=n > Forget vote: https://antispam.osu.edu/b.php?i=1020786410&m=a10512335d01&c=f > ------------------------------------------------------ > END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
