We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and SonicWall NSv based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"The solution is stable."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules. It has reduced the amount of time that it takes to apply firewall rules because everything is based in the cloud."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"It is nice to have a rock solid security platform that we can count on."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic."
"In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID."
"The interface with Panorama makes it very easy to use."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"One of the standout features of SonicWall is its simplicity in creating and managing rules."
"SonicWall NSV is easy to use, and you can use it to manage the logs easily."
"The product helps improve our security."
"The solution has no additional charges and no restrictions on the number of users."
"We purchased the AGSS Bundle (Advanced Gateway Security Suite) for the security services, such as antivirus, intrusion prevention system, and anti-spyware botnet GUI."
"The customization of firewall rules provides great value to our customers as it allows them to lock things up in the way that they desire. When it is used for internal access, with a VPN in place for remote workers, the firewalling services provided by Azure, such as the default services that can be turned on, are applied. However, the use of a software-based virtual firewall gives us greater flexibility in introducing security controls for customers who are publishing applications that are publicly accessible from the public cloud. This virtual firewall provides an additional layer of security and more extensive security control options to ensure the protection of our customers' valuable information and assets."
"The security of this system is fantastic, including the IPS and IDS."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"I would like to see a more thorough QA process. We have had some difficulties from bugs in releases."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"The disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway."
"The DLP functionality or data classification can be improved in the solution's basic firewalling."
"The reporting part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"There are limitations to bandwidth management."
"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."
"It has been brought to our attention by a few customers that they are dissatisfied with the fact that our virtualized service is only offered as a subscription option on the cloud. However, it is worth noting that many other similar services are also offered through a subscription model on the cloud and not through perpetual licensing. It is unclear why these customers would have an issue with this subscription service when so many others are utilizing similar methods."
"SonicWall NSV's SSL VPN could increase its number of users to 100-plus users."
"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."
"We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution."
"An area that could be improved is the export and import settings functionality."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 50 reviews while SonicWall NSv is ranked 35th in Firewalls with 7 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSv is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSv writes "Easy to use, stable, and the security features work well". Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSv is most compared with Azure Firewall, SonicWall NSa, SonicWall TZ and Fortinet FortiGate-VM. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall NSv report.
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