Azure Firewall Reviews

Azure Firewall makes up part of our security solution. We use it internally but we are a consulting company and also advise our customers on the use of it.

The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform. The orchestration is very easy using automation with APIs and scripts.

Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment. They could add specific instance names, such as an instance ID to be specified or a resource group.

Tagging is supported but not on the instances, which is something that could be improved.

The selection of the internal resources into the ruleset could be improved.

Support for layer-seven application filtering should be added because it is not there yet, at all.

It is capable of filtering on the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) but it cannot do the more advanced features that Palo Alto or FortiGate can do, where you can grant or limit access to Facebook but you don't need to specify the domain name because it knows about Facebook as an application. You should be able to simply say "Allow Facebook", but also have it block Facebook Chat, for example. Having control over those specific application protocols within the traffic would be an improvement.

The documentation from Microsoft could be slightly improved, although it could be related to the fact that the product is quickly changing. It may be a case that the documentation updates are of a lower priority than the product itself.

I have been using the Azure Firewall for about one year.

The stability is excellent.

The scalability is very good and you don't have to think about sizing, as in the case of a traditional firewall where you have to think about the throughput. With Azure Firewall, it scales automatically.

We have customers ranging in size from small to enterprise-level organizations. One of them is a large company with 40,000 users on Azure Firewall.

We use the customer support that our customer has access to. If they have enterprise support then we use it, whereas if they do not then we use standard support.

Personally, my experience with Microsoft support has been very good. Their professionals are very quick to respond and they have good feedback. They also have very good support forums and the documentation is fairly good. 

I have experience with similar solutions by Palo Alto and Fortinet. With the inclusion of more advanced features, Azure Firewall will be on par with these products.

The initial setup is straightforward and very easy.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to be clear about your requirements. It is critical to know what the capabilities of the firewall are, as well as what is nice to have when it comes to filtering and protecting the environment.

There are different threat profiles when it comes to protecting user traffic. For example, in a VDI environment, where the users are in the cloud, generating traffic and browsing the internet on virtual machines, Azure might not be the best fit. On the other hand, to protect the workloads on servers like application servers or database servers, it's a perfect fit. So, it is important to be clear about the use cases in order to determine whether it is suitable.

This is a relatively new product but Microsoft is really fast in their development and you never know what they are planning. In perhaps six months, I might rate it a ten out of ten. Nonetheless, at this time there is still some room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I design the architecture and it's an extension of the on-premise that we house on the cloud. We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall.

There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive.

I have been using Azure Firewall for two years. 

To date, I haven't had any issue and I didn't have a requirement to scale, at this stage.

The initial setup is straightforward. We define the setup on templates, we haven't had any specific issues.

I would rate it a six out of ten. It's good enough but it's not as good as other virtual appliances. It's good enough. 

I'm a consultant and our primary use case is for traditional corporate networks. We have about 100 people using the solution. 

Performance and stability are the key features of this product, but the reasonable cost is also an important positive factor. 

I think that their customer support could be improved with a faster response time. 

I think the product could be made more customizable, I'd like to see that in the next release.

We've been using this solution for many years. 

It's a stable solution. 

The technical support could be improved, we use the online support. 

The initial setup was quite difficult. 

I would highly recommend this product. 

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

On-premise to cloud <-> Cloud to on-premise

Managed service.

Scalability, multi-zone and FQDN TAgs.

In a future release, it could be empowered by combining with Azure Private DNS and Front Door.

We've been using the solution for 1 year

The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive.

The solution is scalable.

We deal with technical support on a regular basis. I'd rate the service we've received ten out of most of the support tickets. 

We use several solutions.

Unfortunately, I don't handle the finances or payments for the solution, so I can't compare to others.

FortiGate - also nice solution...

We've used both the on-premises as well as the cloud deployment models. We also occasionally use a hybrid model. During migrations, we use hybrids. Once the migration is done, we move onto the full cloud and pass if over to private cloud or have public access as necessary.

The Azure firewall is prioritized as it is managed solution and does not require any infrastructure base (backbone) hardware support.