We performed a comparison between InfluxDB and Meraki Dashboard based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."
"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."
"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."
"The solution is very powerful."
"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."
"In our case, it started with a necessity to fill the gap that we had in monitoring. We had very reactive monitoring without trend analysis and without some advanced features. We were able to implement them by using a time series database. We are able to have all the data from applications, logs, and systems, and we can use a simple query language to correlate all the data and make things happen, especially with monitoring. We could more proactively monitor our systems and our players' trends."
"The most valuable features of InfluxDB are the documentation and performance, and the good plugins metrics in the ecosystem."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is we can use InfluxDB to integrate with and plug into any other tools."
"It can analyze the traffic that it is picking up from what may be a rogue access point, and it is able to identify those and send relevant notifications."
"There are some whitelist blacklist capabilities in the MX dashboard, which is very helpful."
"What I found most valuable in Meraki Dashboard is that it's well-organized, easy to use, and practical."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity in navigating through the dashboard. It's well set out, and the layout is nice and user friendly. A lot of clients enjoy seeing layer 7 visibility. They get a good indication and insight into what is happening in their network and what applications are being used the most. They can then customize and give preference to business-critical applications."
"Great visibility on the dashboard."
"The hardware of Meraki is very good quality."
"Scalability is one of Meraki Dashboard's strongest features. We have thousands of users if we're counting the end-users on our clients' network, but we have hundreds of clients."
"The most valuable feature is their support, they get better every day."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times."
"The solution's UI can be more user-friendly."
"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."
"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."
"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."
"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."
"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."
"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."
"For instance, you should be able to see if something has been blocked by a firewall rule by looking at a live log of traffic moving through the device. It helps you troubleshoot issues and understand if your rules are working. You need to ensure the firewall is blocking the right things. That's unavailable in the Meraki Dashboard. You have to send the logs to a log server. We use SolarWinds locally, but it's not natively built into Meraki. We're also using Cisco ISA and another tool called Smoothwall."
"It would be helpful to have the ability to create a floor plan based on an existing PDF or JPEG, which is automatically converted into a usable network map."
"The tool is useful for managing devices and monitoring their current state, but it falls short in troubleshooting network issues, particularly with access points. It does not provide a complete understanding of the root causes of the issues. As a result, network engineers have had to use additional tools to complement it and conduct assessments. The only way to improve the tool would be to enhance its capability to identify and resolve network issues effectively."
"I am concerned about the fact that once your licensing expires the devices stop working and become a brick."
"Not a lot of training is available."
"The wait time to speak with a Meraki support engineer is always long, but they get the job done."
"For my purposes, I don't need to see any other features added to the Meraki Dashboard. I have no criticisms and I do like the tool. If I had a criticism for it, it would be about the pricing because it could be a little less, but again, for the service that you get, I won't complain about that too much."
"The MDM, however, is bad. We're using another MDM now because Meraki was so bad."
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InfluxDB is ranked 46th in Network Monitoring Software with 8 reviews while Meraki Dashboard is ranked 9th in Network Monitoring Software with 51 reviews. InfluxDB is rated 7.6, while Meraki Dashboard is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of InfluxDB writes "A powerful, lightweight time series database with a simple query language and easy setup". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki Dashboard writes "Incredibly easy to use, great troubleshooting and prevention of malicious events". InfluxDB is most compared with MongoDB, Cassandra, Netdata and ScyllaDB, whereas Meraki Dashboard is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds NPM, ThousandEyes, Mist AI and Cloud and Zabbix. See our InfluxDB vs. Meraki Dashboard report.
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