MAG Series devices

[muttbarker_]

FYI - I have talked to an SE who says that factory-default still will not allow you change the personality. He has one of the new small units.

As for feature parity - I am a reseller - I have customers saying to me "hey - what's up with the new box?" My answer to them is "I don't have a clue" -- nor do the SE's at this point in time.

I think Juniper did a poor job of releasing this product in terms of educating their business partners.

[keithr_]

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@muttbarker wrote:

FYI - I have talked to an SE who says that factory-default still will not allow you change the personality. He has one of the new small units.

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So, what is the factory default personality then? The data sheets show ordering information for SKUs that simply list that the MAG2600 is for SSL VPN and Guest Access, the 4610/6610/6611 all say "for SSL VPN or NAC users." So, if you can only get it with one personality, which is it, and how do you differentiate which personality you're ordering?

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@muttbarker wrote:

As for feature parity - I am a reseller - I have customers saying to me "hey - what's up with the new box?" My answer to them is "I don't have a clue" -- nor do the SE's at this point in time.

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I thought Juniper had learned their lessons with the SRX debacle. Here we have another product that doesn't seem to be fully baked, and even the SEs don't know what it does? How do they expect to sell these things if even the Juniper SEs can't tell you what they do?

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@muttbarker wrote:

I think Juniper did a poor job of releasing this product in terms of educating their business partners.

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... AND educating potential customers.

"Here's our new device! It's awesome!"

-- "Great, but what does it DO?"

"It's awesome! You should buy it!"

[muttbarker_]

Keith - found out some more details - the small boxes (bottom two) will boot and become either SSL or UAC. Bigger boxes are modular - can run an SSL module and a UAC module in same chassis with a management module. Licenses on the bigger boxes can be shared / transfered from SSL to UAC as you need.

I would certainly consider this a straight up replacement for the current platforns. However, still can't get 100% clarity in regards to feature mapping. Nowhere can I find anything that says "SSL does it - MAG does to"

License pricing is supposed to be out begining of May.

[dfex_]

I got my hands on one of the MAG2600s and here's as much as I've been able to gather from the lab:

- Firstly, out of the box, it boots into Enterprise Guest Access mode, basically an L2 UAC appliance

- There is an option to "Change Personality" whereby you point it at the latest release of SA software, which it duly loads, reboots itself and becomes a fully-blown SA Appliance

- Features-wise on the SA side, everything looks to be there with the notable exception of Secure Meeting.

So unless you need secure meeting, there is no reason to buy an SA2500 anymore as they cost nearly a third more for exactly the same feature set*

* From what I can see

Totally agree on the whole product naming/info being confusing:

- The model of the hardware is MAG2600 (search for this on juniper.net - 2 hits, but neither is a product page)

- The shipping carton has Junos Pulse Gateway written on the front (searching for this on juniper.net - no hits)

- The actual product page on the juniper.net website calls the box "Enterprise Guest Access" and it's found under the UAC product portfolio (No reference to MAG or Junos Pulse Gateway).

It's a shame really, because it's such a kick-ass box and it now fits into a form-factor the size of a house brick (literally).

Anyway, if you want answers straight from the horse's mouth, without waiting on your SE - Kevin Petersen (the product manager) has a blog at http://kevpeterson.com/ and talks about all the MAG boxes quite regularly.

[zanyterp_]

Hi Kevin,

Is there a specific hardware- or software-feature set you are looking to know about? Or just in general are you looking for a plain-English list of what is available on MAG vs SA?

[muttbarker_]

Well I did as a previous poster recommended and went over to Kevin's blog. He always has the straight scoop and I kick myself for not doing it sooner. We have four sales pending right now for SA2500, SA4500 solutions - multi-site, cluster, Secure Meeting, etc.....

Customers are saying - Gee - we want to buy the shiny new toy, not the old dull one - why won't you sell it to us. Based on Kevin Peterson's blog and comments from DFEX I now know what to say to my customers. Feature parity except Secure Meeting which is coming soon.

My complaint is that I should not have to work this hard to get a straight answer. I have seen internal documentation and even that uses phrases like "similar to" when it talks features. When I am talking to a customer about an upgrade from SA2500 - full function to a new solution I can't say "similar" I need to talk specifics.

Sorry to ramble. I know what I need to know to work with customers but frustrated with Juniper's message delivery.

[dfex_]

Hi zanyterp,

I'd like a straight side-by-side comparison, or even simpler - a document listing the features that are NOT available in the MAG series.

I remember a customer asking for a similar comparison of the SA700 (back when it was still with us) vs the SA2500 , and had to go through the entire manual looking for instances of "This feature not supported on SA700".

We'd be selling a lot more of these if we knew more about them!

[SonicBoom_]

Holy cow!, lol glad to know I wasn't the only one that said " oh wow this sounds purpose driven but ...wait, what? huh?

at first I thought due to its tiny form factor this would be something for a small office or as a layer 3 specific device for mobile devices but as I read on and saw the larger models was led to believe it a replacement for the SA device which somehow had the magical layer 3 mobile device connectivity built in, ... now i have no idea but seems to me

MAG2600 replaces SA2500

MAG4610 replaces SA4500

MAG6610 replaces SA6500

MAG6611 replaces SA6500 cluster

ok i've read a little more about the NAC part of it which seems to be whats driving it and is its selling point, but i still cant figure out if its a replacement for Host Checker or just a new updated name for it.

[zanyterp_]

Thank you for the clarifications on what are needed; unfortunately, I'm not in a position to provide something like that. But I can try to let some people who might be able to get something like that available.

[dfex_]

Actually, as a follow up to this thread, there is a couple of datasheets and a REALLY good presentation that have appeared on the partner website now.

They answer a lot of questions, including the fact that Secure Meeting and ICE will both be available next month. The word "similar" still gets used a lot, but there is a reasonably good feature list available.