aws-in-houston

Almost there

• May 19, 2017
• Review verified by AWS Marketplace

The product takes MX100 functionality and runs it as an EC2 instance. This has allowed us to join a VPC as a Site in our Meraki Dashboard and have it participate in the Site to Site VPN Mesh.
- Previously connectivity to AWS was hindered because 3rd party VPN connectivity from Meraki to AWS is a 3rd party connection. Given multiple premise based MX devices at several sites, you can't set them up to all connect to one AWS based VPC because the UI errors stating a IP overlap due to the VPC's cidr being entered on two seperate 3rd party VPN configurations. This is a gap in Meraki's software that is partially solved by deploying the vMX.
- I say "partially" because I don't feel it is a tech for tech drop in replacement. AWS VPN Connections offer 2 peers in an HA fashion that fail to each other during issues or code upgrades. Meraki offers this type of ability in their physical MX devices but they are not yet offering it in the vMX line. This addition would really add value to this solution.

Cost: My company has numerous premise locations. without vMX, connectivity from several Meraki sites to one VPC normally requires an AWS based VPN tunnel for each site. At $0.05/hr for these it costs me around $2000 a year per VPC. Current MSRP pricing (5/19/2017) for the VMX license that replaces the AWS native VPNs is $5000 for 3 years. With about $700 in EC2 cost per year if you run it on demand. This is near break even per year when compared to native AWS VPN Connections for us. Reserve pricing could help and total ROI will depend on the number of sites you need to connect to each VPC.

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