HPE (Aruba) Aruba Switches

Aruba Switches run on AOS-CX, its a modern, modular Linux based operating system with an embedded Network Analytics Engine (NAE), REST APIs and support for smart automation. This enables real-time network troubleshooting and network automation. AOS-CX supports features like Virtual Switching Framework (VSF) and VSX HA Pairs enabling stacking of up to 10 units into a single logical switch providing a switch stack of 480 Access Ports. Aruba CX Switching integrates Zero-Trust principals through Port Level Auth with ClearPass, enforcing role-based access and dynamically segmenting IoT, Guest and Corp Staff.

The lifetime warranty is a bonus and PoE delivery is powerful enough that most will not hit the power limit. The default port speed is 1GB which should be good enough for most, especially in the environments that it is designed to work in. The ability to get some endpoint details rather than just the MAC address is surprisingly good when you are looking at the traffic over the switch.

Stability, good CLI commands clear focus on main features like spanning tree, vlans and routing. Because the switches are very long in the market you can easily buy replacements for a cheap price.

Some of the smaller Aruba CX Switches have a small PoE limit of only 139W, when combining Aruba's 7 Series Access Points you may only be able to plug in less than a handful into this Switch.

There are niggles; stacking ports seem to occasionally not sync at line speed when with certain other Aruba switches when a link goes down, but that can be fixed. Updates to the switch can be a pain to work out which version to apply. The GUI whilst web based, which is good, is not that intuitive, so you do have to sometimes read the manual for something you think should be simple.

There is no future for this product line, but the firmware ist still maintained and the life warranty is a great feature !