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Cisco Cloud Services Router (CSR) 1000V - AX Pkg. Max Performance

Cisco Systems, Inc. | 17.03.08a

Linux/Unix, Other Cisco IOS XE - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Reviews from AWS Marketplace

14 AWS reviews
1-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Kris

Poor technical performance, and poor commercial experience

  • August 21, 2019
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

Sorry, but I'm going to have to give a scolding bad review here.

We purchased (with the intention of ordering another 6 more units) of t2.medium licensed CSR1000v AX max performance, and the experience has far from being exceptional.

1. Cisco has no means of wanting to be reached of contacted beyond the use of community-supported forums.
2. While the "platform hardware throughput level" lists "200000000 kb/s", I'm getting at best a feeble 2 mbit.
3. The BYOL edition appears to have moved to 16.12.01, while the AWS licensed is still at 16.10.01b, and community forum suggests me to upgrade to 16.10.02, which does not exist, unless I have a TAC support agreement.

I'm just itching to move to VyOs.

    ITDirect93f2

The integration and configuration to the AWS environment was difficult

  • December 12, 2018
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

We have been trying to establish VPN connections between retail locations on our AWS VPC. This has not been very reliable from our experience.
What is most valuable?
The deployment was pretty quick, so the AWS Marketplace options are very helpful. We are also very familiar with SCO OS and are able to bring those skills and commands into Cisco CSR, which made logical sense for us to use it.
It has the Dynamic Multipoint VPN solution, which is the number one thing that we wanted.
What needs improvement?
I would like some deployment examples and guides specific to AWS VPCs and how to separate your subnets. Then, how they tie-in with the Internet gateway and any NAT services that we are running on our VPC. This would be extremely helpful. Thus, a lot more detail around deployments would go a long ways towards easing customers' fears.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It seems pretty stable. We have never had any issues with it.
The reliability issues that we had were with the VPN tunnels working correctly. However, with the router, we didn't seem to have much trouble with it, just the connectivity.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales vertically, but it just costs a lot more.
With the on-premise, they are pushing their newer services routers so they have the same function as the cloud service routers do. However, because the price points are so high, they will rate limit your interface to bring the price down. Therefore, it is the same model that they are already doing in the cloud, but they are now moving that model into on-premise.
How is customer service and technical support?
The technical support was okay. The product was fairly new at the Amazon store at that point in time, so the first tech was not very familiar with it. However, they were able to pass it off to somebody else who was able to help me.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration to the AWS environment was difficult. We had to make sure that we had the right subnets lined up and the Internet gateway was mapped correctly. Then, we had all the routes for the router to get out to the Internet and to map all those connections back in successfully. This took a long time.
Things which we could do on-premise very quickly took a while for us to figure out how to do with the Cisco Cloud Service Router.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The should make the Dynamic Multipoint VPN solution more affordable. Right now, at 10MB or 20MB, it makes a lot of sense. However, at 100MB, it doesn't scale well and the price goes up significantly.
We found purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a good, easy experience. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace for easy of purchasing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are still looking at alternatives. We are looking at Palo Alto as an alternative and using their IPSec tunnels.
We have familiarity with the Cisco operating system, which is why we chose CSR. We have been using Cisco products forever.
What other advice do I have?
The product has value. I recommend having a partner who has integrated it before and can bring that expertise to the table. Just because your good with the physical appliances doesn't mean you will be able to exactly translate that into the Amazon networking world.
We have a couple hundred other Cisco routers, but this is the only virtual one that we have tried. The AWS version seems to be a lot less reliable, and we had a lot of issues with the initial configuration.
Due to the nature of running workloads in the cloud and needing networking in the cloud, there is no choice but to use cloud routers.

    Had-enuf-cisco

Worst product ever.

  • March 23, 2018
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

Cisco changed the way the CSR is managed between versions 16.6.1 and 16.7.1 in a non-backwards compatible way and said nothing about it.
What this means is, if you planned to use DMVPN in an HA config on AWS, you can ignore the last 5+ years of documentation. None of it works now.
We're stuck on ver. 16.6.1 unless we re-architecht our AWS infrastructure at this point.
Cisco waits 3+ months after a new IOS XE is released before making it available to AWS users. So, if there are critical or remotely exploitable bugs... you're out of luck.
You say a new version has come out and you're ready to upgrade? Good luck with that. The only way to upgrade is to back up your config and create entirely new VMs with new ENIs, etc. Far from painless.
Found a bug? Get ready to keep it to yourself as AWS could care less and they won't inform Cisco. In fact, there's no way to inform Cisco without purchasing a support contract - just to tell them you've found a bug.
For a product that costs approximately $7,000/year to use in the default config, some support should be included.
I cannot recommend this product to anyone. Explore the alternatives.

    DTF

login details not provided

  • February 03, 2018
  • Review verified by AWS Marketplace

Cannot login to the router due to lack of details, also there is no support contact for the cisco product

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