Coming from a Netscreen-25 and an SSG-140, which both worked flawlessly for years, I have to say that the SRX340 is a massive disappointment. Here are my experiences with the device so far:
* The supplier ordered the wrong maintenance package. I ended up with a 3rd-party contract, except nobody could tell me who the 3rd party was, and Juniper support wouldn't talk to me because I had to go through this mythical 3rd party company. Eventually, it was swapped for a Juniper contract, but the first month was frustrating.
* The J-Web interface may as well not be there. It doesn't work. Period. All I have to do to crash it is do something extremely complicated, like look at the Ports and it ends up with a grey screen.
* J-Web will only work with Firefox, according to Juniper. Except that even with Firefox, it still doesn't work. It just works less badly than it does with Edge.
* There are about 3000 versions of Junos available when I search for the SRX340. Yet the recommended version is a) several major revisions behind and b) several SR patches behind. If the others aren't compatible with the SRX340, please hide them.
* Updating the FW is almost impossible. It won't do it from the GUI. Stuff seems to upload, then it sits there for hours doing nothing. Crashing J-Web mostly. The only way I have found to do it is manually, with a USB stick, mounting it in bash, then updating from the CLI. Sorry Juniper, this is the 21st Century, not 1977.
Before all the CLI-adorers start, I don't mind the odd CLI. I use Cisco and Dell switches almost exclusively from the command line. I just don't like the Junos CLI. Sorry.
I've had this device for nearly a year now and still haven't put it into service. The year's maintenance is nearly up and I'm seriously contemplating just binning it and going for a Cisco device instead.
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MARCUS BAINBRIDGE
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