Aruba Networks Comparison: Aruba Central vs. Aruba AirWave

"Aruba" is a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company founded in 2002 and was later acquired by HP in 2015. The company started its operations with the principle of "Customer first and customer last" and has followed the same motto since then.

Aruba serves the IT domain with a wide range of product portfolios in networking and wireless technologies. Aruba is renowned for its exceptional wireless services and high performance, made possible by its robust enterprise-grade access points, networking switches, and other appliances. With artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, Aruba delivers automated, faster, and simpler network management for all types of businesses. The cloud-centric management approach for managing Aruba devices and services helps enterprises run and operate uninterruptedly while ensuring maximum output.

What is Aruba AirWave?

Aruba AirWave is the product of the long-awaited customers and the need for a highly dedicated network management system (NMS).

AirWave is a versatile cross-vendor network management solution. With Aruba Airwave, enterprise networks can benefit from seamless monitoring, management, control, and analysis. These features are not only applicable to Aruba. They can also be used for switches, controllers, access points, wired and wireless, and remote connectivity needs from other vendors.

Initially, AirWave was built to serve, integrate, and monitor Aruba products and third-party network appliances regardless of brand type. This helps customers integrate non-Aruba devices for monitoring and control on a single glass pane. Log analysis, deeper visibility, and Wi-Fi connectivity health checks and status are just some of the cool features of AirWave.

Choose Your Deployment Method For Aruba AirWave

Enterprises can choose whether to host AirWave locally in a virtual environment like VMware or Vsphere or purchase dedicated hardware. AirWave NMS can manage up to 4000 devices. These devices include Aruba and other third-party products, such as switches, access points, and controllers.

AirWave Capabilities & Features

Aruba Airvawe is a network management tool. It is designed to simplify configuration for routers, switches, and access points. How? By using configuration groups, assigned templates, and step-by-step workflows.

Among other benefits, Aruba Airwave:

· Facilitates users with various options to deploy, manage, compare, and configure Aruba devices

· Streamlines the configuration process

· Simplifies management, application, and configuration settings for groups of devices

· Can also be used for other vendors' products and third-party network devices

One of the benefits of AirWave is its ability to work with entire configuration files. This means that all configurations can be imported, compared, assigned, and archived. Therefore, managing configurations across a large number of devices becomes easier. Moreover, smaller segments of configuration files can also be modified and used across groups of devices, which makes the process more flexible.

Less Workload & Simplified Management For IT Teams

With AirWave, IT teams can quickly add, modify, and deploy devices across distributed locations, which saves time and minimizes errors. for more granular. This is because the tool makes managing configurations across multiple devices from a central location easy. Moreover, Aruba's Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) feature can be used to automatically push configuration files to devices, which further simplifies the deployment process.

Ultimately, Aruba AirWave includes integrated auditing, which is useful for security and change management. This feature allows IT teams to track changes made to

configurations, which helps to ensure that security is maintained and changes are made in a controlled manner.

With AirWave, enterprises can leverage the following benefits:

1.     Zero-Touch Provisioning

2.     Contact and location tracking by analyzing historical Wi-Fi data

3.     Wi-Fi health, network health, and traffic analysis

4.     Cross-vendor integration and support

5.     User and application visibility

6.     Application and user control

7.     VPN, LAN and WLAN management

8.     Role-Based Access

9.     Certified with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2

10.  Firmware upgrade and compliance

Pros:

·       Ideal for Campus LAN environment

·       Fits a small budget.

·       Reliable and secure.

·       Supports third-party integration

Cons:

·       Not a good choice for distributed networks

·       No AI capabilities

·       No hybrid deployment

·       Lack of automated provisioning

What is Aruba Central?

Aruba Central is an upgraded or advanced version of AirWave. It is powered with artificial intelligence and workflow automation to manage and monitor any scale of network infra.

With robust security, it further optimizes daily IT operations and monitoring. It is a cloud-native monitoring solution but is also available as an on-premises system. This is again helpful for organizations with compliance restrictions to adapt cloud-native solutions.

The Cloud Approach for Network Management Systems

Large-scale networks require enterprise-grade scalability and resiliency. Aruba Central satisfies this need with its cloud-native microservices architecture. Moreover, it is designed with intuitive workflows and dashboards, making it easy to use for SMBs with limited IT personnel. Therefore, Aruba Central becomes a perfect fit for businesses that require powerful network management capabilities but do not have large IT teams to manage them. 

Aruba Central has been integrated with HPE GreenLake. This integration provides an efficient operating model and a single platform for IT executives. It also enables IT executives to view and manage their computing, storage, and networking infrastructure. This integration helps to improve efficiency and cost controls by providing a centralized view of the entire IT infrastructure.

Aruba Central provides AI-powered characteristics over AirWave for more granular and profound control and visibility. Unlike AirWave, it is suitable for large-scale multi-branched and distributed networks. The AIOps feature helps administrators solve the issue without user performance impact. It provides suggestions in the form of prescriptions on optimizing which portion of the system is more efficient.

Aruba Central: SaaS or On-Premises?

It can be used and deployed in both clouds as a native cloud application that denotes SaaS offerings or can be implemented as an on-premises solution. Both models are subscription-based and require an active license for implementation and technical support.

What Are the Key Features Offered by Aruba Central?

From zero-touch provisioning to automated onboarding and configuration of network devices, Aruba Central has a rich set of features. Large enterprises can utilize these features to monitor, control, and manage their distributed network infrastructure.

Along with AirWave features, Aruba Central also provides the following:

1.     Simplified onboarding and provisioning

2.     AI-powered monitoring and troubleshooting

3.     Mobile-installed application

4.     AI Search

5.     AI Assist

6.     AI-powered firmware recommendation

7.     Global Policy automation and orchestration

8.     Intrusion detection and web control filtering

9.     SD branch orchestration

10.  Secure wireless segmentation

11.  Intent-based policy engine and access controls

Pros:

·       Highly resilient and reliable

·       Optimized for large distributed networks

·       Multi-vendor device integration

·       Integrated AI

·       Hybrid deployment

·       Faster processing

·       Built for modern network infra

Cons:

·       Expensive

Feature Comparison

Final Decision

Go for Aruba Central if:

• You have a distributed network architecture, remote branches, or data centers
• Your network consists of numerous devices to be monitored, managed, and controlled centrally
• Automating the above processes is essential for you

Go with Aruba AirWave if:

• Your need is only serving the Campus LAN and some remote networks
• Automation and scalability are not a top priority

If you are unsure and want to make the best out of your investment, CONTACT US. Our dedicated expert team is ready to help!