We use it internally to manage the solutions that we provide to our customers. So, we use it to manage our own firewalls and Prisma Access. We also use it to manage managed firewalls. We can also resell it, but we don't tend to do too many panoramas.
We are using version 10.0.7, which is the latest one under version 10. We're not running 10.1 yet. We don't need to run that.
The entire ease of use is most valuable. If you're managing firewalls locally with PAN-OS, the look and feel of Panorama is the same. So, you don't have to relearn another product. If you're used to managing firewalls from Palo Alto, you can easily use Panorama to manage them. It looks and feels the same.
Our primary issue at the moment is to manage Prisma Access because we just switched over to using Prisma Access for our customers. My newest one is in North America. It is a great tool for that. The fact that you can push out your Prisma Access just dynamically and it changes into Prisma Access Cloud is fantastic.
It tends to move along fairly quickly in terms of features because it is a part of PAN-OS. We are waiting on one feature that's on the beta at the moment, but that's because we use Okta as our authentication.
Reporting might be an area to improve. It can provide reporting or some sort of graphical representation of your environment.
I have been using it for probably two years.
There are no reliability issues.
You can manage multiple environments, multiple firewalls, and multiple locations with it. So, it scales really well.
We have just a handful of admins. We have less than five of them.
I have not used their technical support.
We've always been Palo Alto. The founders of our company were ex-Palo Alto people, so it is always going to be Palo Alto.
I've been using it for two years, but I didn't actually deploy those instances at Panorama. When we recently moved to Azure, I actually deployed it in Azure, and I had no issues. So, I was a complete rookie in terms of deploying it because I'd never done it before. I did that with minimal assistance from Palo Alto or anybody. So, I would say it is easy to deploy in the cloud.
In terms of updates, PAN-OS releases come every month, six weeks, or so. You have to be running a higher or equal level of Panorama to the firewalls that you're managing. If you're keeping your firewall environments up to date, you also have to keep your Panorama up to date, and with that comes new features. You have to plan for firewall updates more than Panorama, which is just managing other environments. You can pretty much update Panorama whenever you want. There is no customer or firewall outage when you update Panorama. It is just the reboot time. You just download it, install it, and reboot it, and you're done. It takes less than 20 minutes.
We're a reseller, and we're an MSSP. So, we get some extreme discounts.
It is easy if you're used to managing firewalls. Using Panorama to manage the firewalls is not rocket science. It is just another GUI or web UI.
Palo Alto is really good at innovation, adding new functions and features, and rolling those out on a regular basis. So, they're going in the right direction. As long as that keeps happening, they are good. They should just keep adding and improving.
I would rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama a nine out of 10.