Juniper SRX Series Firewall Reviews

I am a teacher and the solution is used as a router for my students' laboratory exercises. I have the firewall function switched off and the solution operates as a main router for our very limited traffic. 

The solution is stable, inexpensive, and works well for medium size companies.

The solution's configurations and syntax are specific and more complicated than other platforms. Compared to Cisco, the solution is not intuitive. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable and I rate it a ten out of ten. 

I have not used support services because I rely on experienced colleagues for answers. 

The solution is quite simple to set up if you spend a few hours learning the syntax. Based on experience level, it can be implemented in a few hours. 

The pricing is very inexpensive which is the main reason I bought the solution. One device costs around 50 EUR through the University's vendor who is modernizing our network. 

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

It was a MPLS implementation for a Coal India product.

We have more than 10,000 people using this solution in telecommunication.

For the routers, every feature is quite essential and this is a complete router. The firewall applications are scalable.

To compare with Fortinet, Juniper needs to improve their security features.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It's stable.

It's easily scalable.

I would rate technical support 4 out of 5. They're responsive.

It's easy to set up. I would rate it 5 out of 5.

It takes a maximum of 30 minutes to deploy everything.

Two engineers are enough for maintenance because it's pretty stable and the hardware quality is very good.

For a medium-sized organization, the cost for the licensing and implementation of Juniper SRX for 10 users would be about $300-400.

Juniper is lagging behind compared with Fortinet and Cisco.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

If you have the routing solutions and you want to use Juniper as a complementary solution, you could use it. But if you want it mainly for the firewall, I would recommend Fortinet or Cisco instead.

We're using it as a primary firewall and UTM for the main lines coming into our offices and also for connecting our sub-offices around the world.

Previously, we had different routers for each of the incoming lines to the office, and we had other firewalls on the backend to manage them. Now, we have changed all of these, and we have all the lines coming into one single solution, which is SRX. We manage everything very easily from one single interface. Previously, we used to have 10 different devices to do that. Now, we have only one.

We like the fact that we can easily combine multiple internet links to the office and use them like one link.

It is very fast and very easy to maintain. Another nice part of it is that you can easily extract the logs and move them over to a security operations center.

Its logging is very good, but we would like to have an easier way of creating more reports. We would like to be able to manipulate the reports or manage the way the reports are coming out.

In terms of new features, we are using almost all of the features that it has, and there is nothing specific that it is lacking.

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. We haven't used the scalability up till now, but we know that we can extend it.

We have 150 users here, and then we have around 30 to 40 users in different countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Norway. They're using some parts of it. They are using some smaller units to connect to the main office.

We don't have any plans to increase its usage as of now. Any expansion would be in terms of getting new offices around the world. We may install more of those smaller ones, but for the time being, as far as I know, we will not expand it in the office because it is already performing as it should. It actually did a very good job when we were working remotely because it allows us to connect to the office very easily and work remotely.

They have been pretty good. In some cases, they took a little bit of time to give a response for the cases we were facing. However, in most of the cases, they were very fast in responding and providing full resolution to the cases we faced.

We had different routers for each of the incoming lines to the office, and we had other firewalls on the backend to manage them. We switched because it was too difficult to manage multiple solutions for each of those lines. We wanted to have one single place where we could manage everything. We also didn't want to have some people going out from one internet line and some from another internet line. We wanted to combine all those lines together and make them work as one, and that's what we achieved with SRX.

We were not so much involved in the setup because we had a security company to do that for us. It took us about two months.

We had a security company for its implementation. Our experience with them was very good.

For its maintenance, we have our IT department. There are three people for managing the maintenance of it. 

We evaluated many other options. We checked out Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Check Point.

I would advise others to do good planning in the beginning because that helps a lot in having a very little downtime. It took us two months to implement it, which might seem very long, but we had zero downtime. Nobody noticed anything during the switch. It was the best way to implement it. This is the most important part. When you are trying to do such changes in the organization, it is very important that you do it by using the right resources and from the right perspective.

I would rate Juniper SRX a 10 out of 10.

We use Juniper SRX for branch offices or for small office use.

The GUI is simple to use.

I have been using Juniper SRX for approximately 20 years.

Juniper SRX is stable, but it could improve. FortiGate has better stability than Juniper SRX.

Juniper SRX could improve the scalability to compete better with other solutions, such as 
FortiGate.

We have less than 10% of our customers using Juniper SRX.

We use FortiGate solutions and we have been deploying them more than Juniper SRX because of the benefits.

The installation is straightforward.

The time of the deployment depends on the complexity of the environment. If the customer requires HA deployment and the configuration could take longer time. On average, for a small-scale branch office, it can be completed within one day, which includes testing. If the customer does not have any special preference on the policy and they do not have any IP tunnels then it could be completed within half a day.

We have an in-house team of 10 engineers that do the implementation and maintenance of the solutions we provide.

I rate Juniper SRX a seven out of ten.

We had implemented two SRXs in high availability mode. They were used, generally, for firewall and NAT translation tables, for forwarding for services, and connecting branch offices. We have a constant internet connection, which is directly connected with the branch offices, in general. We didn't explicitly configure or use any specific SRX features regarding the filtering of URLs or something that a UTM could use, since Juniper has a more advanced configuration and, in general, a UI that's made for the customer.

The solution is mostly stable. 

We get technical support via the reseller, and they are very helpful. 

You can scale the solution. 

The solution works well for larger organizations. 

We've had some issues with the firmware. 

The solution is quite advanced. You need a lot of training to use it effectively.

When we bought the equipment, and we have more Juniper devices, not just SRX, they started to malfunction. I'm not sure why. All the devices that we bought were from the year 2018. We had the EX4600. Something was not working with this device. It was offline. We bought everything in twos so we could make a high availability with all of them. The current has malfunctioned, and all the warranties have also expired. We are, generally, expecting malfunctioning, maybe in the next few years. I was planning to switch the Juniper equipment with something else to avoid this.

It does not have a simple user interface. 

The warranty offered on the devices isn't long enough. it would be better if you could extend it out to five or eight years. Otherwise, you have to be very careful with the equipment. 

I'm not sure if Juniper SRX can filter emails or block viruses. I'm not familiar with these aspects as I haven't had that much experience using the SRX inside the UI. However, if they do not, it would be ideal if they did. I'm not sure if it can deflect any kind of DDoS attack. 

The one particular issue that I've seen on the SRX, is if you have SSH enabled and if there is a large number of SSH connections, when a brute force attack happens, the SRX, in general, tends to become unstable, or it resets by itself. That's one issue that's particularly making me angry, and I had to request the reseller to block the SSH permanently, or just to allow access, so only they can connect.

Juniper SRX was implemented in our company at the start of 2018.

While the solution has been running stable, one device has also malfunctioned. We had some issues with Juniper in general. It was regarding the firmware and some box, or something like that. We've needed to contact our reseller more frequently to fix the issues that are occurring when using the device.

Regarding stability, it's pretty much working in a stable way. I haven't had any issues regarding, let's say, speeds or connectivity or general day-to-day use, when users connected on the switches and accessing the internet, and so on. That said, sometimes with the devices, strange issues happen.

Regarding scalability, generally, it is simple, I would say, at least from my perspective. I wasn't the person that configured the devices, however. The reseller was. 

Before the Corona crisis, there were 250 users. Now we've got maybe 90 to 100 people.

We generally contact the reseller that sold us the device and also has a maintenance protocol. We have services on-demand when some issues arise and we need help.

The reseller was pretty good regarding ticket issues, management, or making modifications, even during the production time. They are really trusted people, and a trusted IT company, and they've expertly managed all the requirements that I've sent them or any other modification on the network that I wanted to have.

I've used Cyber and a Sophos UTM device. Juniper is, generally, more advanced. I haven't been able to get enough training to maintain the Juniper device.

The main reason we chose Juniper was the stability, and the number of concrete connections that users can make when, let's say, they going out to the internet, and accessing services over the internet. Also, regarding the network port-forwarding to internal servers, in services, the device that we had before was Cyberoam UTM, and it didn't quite handle the high load. I generally noticed that SRX can handle pretty high network loads when going in or out. It's proven itself to be stable in that regard.

The initial setup was generally handled by the reseller and they did the setup as described on the schematic and regarding core network configuration, high availability, security, firewalls, et cetera. It was, generally, out of the box when it was configured and set up from the ground up.

While the setup was planned in 2017, it was up and running in 2018. It took about six months or so.

We switched office buildings, the main office. The new office was built with this solution. Everything was migrated, including all the network devices, all the servers, all the ISP, internet connections, and so on. Everything was, generally, carefully planned when it was deployed.

Our reseller also handles the maintenance. Generally, that takes one or two people.

Our reseller partner handled the initial setup for the most part.

I can't speak to the licensing. It's not an aspect I handle directly. I can't say that there are extra costs involved beyond the licensing fee. 

We are currently using Juniper SRX, however, I was thinking about maybe changing the devices to FortiGate or a UTM device.

Lately I was thinking about simplifying. Maybe FortiGate might have something more user-friendly for the end-user or for the customer experience.

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

We are using the SRX Model 345. It's a physical device. It's not a virtual instance.

In general, I wouldn't recommend Juniper to, for example, a small business. I would maybe recommend it to a bigger company. We might have made a mistake taking Juniper. Maybe we should have used something more user-friendly.

I would recommend it to a company that has more than 250 people. Or maybe even over 300. For a smaller company, it's not financially, efficient in the long-term, in terms of subscriptions or maintenance costs and similar things. A company that uses high-grade enterprise equipment, should be really financially equipped to handle such things.

It's highly advanced, at least for me. I would really need some training to at least handle some basic things, or maintenance, or even Firmware upgrading or high availability configurations. It's too advanced for me. I would really need to have some kind of network specialist certificate to manage them.

I would be really worried about the warranty as a new user as well. You really need to keep the subscriptions up to date, or not to stop them. If you've stopped them, you also need to pay penalties for the years that the subscriptions weren't used. 

Regarding equipment, you really need to have them in twos, not one. You need to have high availability for all of them. The equipment tends to malfunction, specifically if there are any power issues inside the building, or if there isn't any generator or UPS underneath, and so on. The equipment really needs to be taken care of.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for protection and security. We primarily use the solution for an internal firewall.

If you require any particular rule that needs to be modified, any particular rule that needs to be fine-tuned, the solution will give you all the details regarding how to fine-tune the policy, including the destination, IP, et cetera. You can easily fine-tune whatever you need to in Juniper. It's easy to implement and meets our patience threshold. 

The dashboard is very helpful. It's extremely useful in terms of putting the necessary policies in place.

I handle the operation part. I'm just putting policies, et cetera, on Juniper. For tasks such as those, it is very easy and it is a comfortable, straightforward process.

The solution has proven to be quite stable.

Technical support has been quite helpful.

I've noticed that the management interface could use some updates and upgrades.

The dashboard can be updated. 

The reporting could be more robust and in-depth.

I've looked into the Check Point firewall a bit and I've found that its anti-spoofing is a good feature. Juniper should consider adding that as a feature.

I've only just begun to really use the product. I only have one year of experience so far. It's still new to me. Therefore, it's hard to make any notes on any features or improvements, as I'm still familiarizing myself with everything. I need time to compare it to other firewalls, and I have not gone through the process of doing that just yet. I need more time.

I've been dealing with the solution for about one year. It hasn't been that long. 

It is really stable. I've seen Juniper work well in my other companies as well. It is very good, in terms of stability. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is reliable.

Overall, the scalability is very good. A company should have no trouble with scaling if it would like to do so.

We have about 2,000 users currently. They cover various roles in our organization. It's not just used by a specific team.

The technical support on offer is very good. Whenever I would have some issues, they have responded on time and they have really good knowledge of the product. We've been quite satisfied overall.

We use a variety of solutions, including Cisco and Check Point.

I did not handle the initial implementation. That was handled by someone else. Therefore, I can't really share any insights on the process. I do not know if it was easy or difficult, or how long it really took to deploy.

I do not handle the licensing arrangements. That's handled by management. Therefore, I can't speak to how much it costs the organization or how often we pay a licensing fee.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

In general, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate this product at a nine. We've been quite satisfied with its capabilities so far. 

I'd recommend the solution, however, it really depends on what an organization needs. There are various factors, like pricing, for example, that should be taken into account when looking at solutions.

We use the solution as a device to meet NTLS connections, a firewall, and we are thinking about using it for SD-WAN.

The firewall features and the routing capability are the most valuable. The interface is straightforward and we have not had any problems with integration.

Their models for service providers could improve. We are an MSP, we resell services and I think the company could have a better program for service providers because our needs are different from our regular customer that is buying it for.

More recently we started using the GUI interface and that looks pretty shameful and needs improvement.

Juniper has a different product line that has artificial intelligence capabilities. In the future, we would like to see that extended to the SRX line.

I have been using the solution for approximately two years.

We have found the solution to be very stable. We have had literally little to no hardware or device failures in the field and have not had any customer complaints. In the years we have been using the solution we have not had any issues using it.

The scalability is good. The solution is best for small to medium size businesses.

We had to use the support in a couple of instances. When we have used the support, it was good. They were responsive and able to resolve our issues. There is also some community support online that I have found to be helpful.

The installation difficulty depends on the setup. Initially, when we started using the solution, we were using the command line interface and it took us a while to learn the commands, eventually, it becomes straightforward. 

The full deployment took us approximately one month. We typically need only one person for deployment, and we have a service operation center that manages the devices and provides the maintenance.

The price could improve, it is a bit expensive. Our licensing cost is approximately $120.00 USD annually. There are some extra fees, for example, the GUI has an orchestrator that has its own fees. 

Some of our clients have also seen similar solutions from our competitors such as Cisco and Fortinet. I think technically they are all very good products. However, for us we were looking for a product that was stable and had good support, this is the reason we chose Juniper. We package Juniper as part of our managed service to our customers.

My advice would be, generally, it is a good product with helpful support. The one thing we would like to see changes in is the pricing could be better.

I rate Juniper SRX an eight out of ten.

The Juniper SRX is our edge firewall.

We have three in total. Two of them are set up in an HA pair, and the other is standalone in another city.

This product has definitely not improved the way our organization functions.

I am familiar with Cisco products and when we purchased the Juniper units, they told us that if you know Cisco IOS then Juniper SRX is really easy. It isn't. It would be like saying that if you know English, then Chinese is really easy. The reality is that it's completely different. There's no commonality and the philosophies are different. Everything is different.

We purchased it for the basic firewall features but added UTM a little bit later.

The reliability needs to be improved. We purchased three devices and all three have been replaced under RMA. We've had other problems where they have needed to be rebooted.

A couple of times I've run into the problems where they have to integrate with other systems. The Juniper support really doesn't have a clue about other systems. They know Juniper and if everything is Juniper then it's great. However, we have Windows RADIUS Servers and I need Juniper-specific settings for them. Unfortunately, they're having a real hard time telling me what those should be, and they keep referring back to it being Microsoft, which they don't support. When they say that I need to speak with Microsoft, I remind them that these are things that are defined in the Juniper configurations that I need to set up. They seem to forget that not everybody is exclusively Juniper.

We bought three Juniper SRX345s about four years ago, and we are still using them today.

We have had glitches that necessitating rebooting the device. For example, a couple of times, they just stop routing on certain VLANs, and one time, it was our server VLANs, so our DNS was down and no one could get to anything. People thought that our internet connection down but actually, it was the DNS and the routing to it had been stopped.

We're a relatively small organization so we didn't scale it.

All of the people in the organization are protected by the devices.

I have used technical support quite a bit, and they are really good. I would rate them an eight out of ten. There is almost always room for improvement.

Prior to the Juniper SRX devices, we had some Cisco ASAs. They were reaching end-of-life so we had to replace them.

At the time we were shopping, Cisco was behind in their technologies. Had they kept up with the technology and provided a comparable device at a competitive price, we would have stayed with Cisco.

We hired a contractor to set up the units.

The IT manager and I, being the network admin, are the only ones who touch it. We try to keep the software updated on all of our devices.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this product is to make sure that they fully understand Junos OS. Over the past four years, I have become moderately proficient with Juniper SRX. There still a lot to learn but I also have contractors that I can get assistance from if needed. For example, currently, I'm trying to set up RADIUS and I'm having some problems with it.

In summary, I think that their design philosophy is really good, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.