Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Reviews

I have completed ten projects. The solution is used for network security, application control, and enforcement of policies on end-user devices.

The solution enables organizations to enforce policies. We can control every endpoint that is connected to the network.

The vendor must improve the way it advertises and markets the product.

I have been using the solution for four years.

I did not find any bugs in the tool. However, we'll face some issues if we do not configure it properly.

Almost 25 customers in Riyadh migrated from Juniper to Palo Alto this year. Before buying the product, we must know the number of users who will be using it. We must buy the model that best suits our needs.

Some people do not know how to open a case with the support team. When a customer contacts the support team, the team must help the customer to open a case. After a case is opened, the support team must respond within 15 to 20 minutes. However, the team takes three to four hours to respond. There is no proper support channel to follow up on cases.

Deploying a firewall is not easy until we have a basic knowledge of routing and security. If we have the knowledge, we can find the proper document on the website and do it easily. We should know the basic configuration. The deployment process is user-friendly. We can configure it easily.

The product is cheaper than the on-premise version.

When compared with FortiGate, Palo Alto has more security products. However, Palo Alto did not publish the security profile for the end-users or partners. They must explain to their end users why they are better than FortiGate.

People considering implementing the product must consider investing in the on-premise solution instead. If someone has a good experience with VMs, I suggest they choose VM, as it is cheaper than on-premises. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use the product on our Azure network firewalls. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is stable. 

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten. We have 100 users for the product. 

We encountered quality issues over support. 

Neutral

The tool's deployment is simple. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is an expensive product but the best one in the market. 

I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution. It's only for netting and simple source-destination blocking. The client wanted everything, so they wanted us to implement a third-party solution. Palo Alto was the leading solution. It's easy to install. 

Palo Alto is dynamic regarding protocol rules, and it is classless. The client also wanted a third-party solution between their on-premise environment and Azure, so they went for Palo Alto. Palo Alto VM-Series is deployed on the Azure Cloud.

We previously had a hardware solution. With VM-Series, you don't need to purchase the hardware. You can deploy it in the cloud, or they have a PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS version. You connect your network to their cloud and get the traffic filtered. 

The most valuable feature is the proxy write. It's called the Write Fill process. It's in a bundle of everything. Palo Alto has everything, including CAD management, malware protection, and a file management system. There is a bundle of packages. This is not in the latest edition of Azure Firewall.

The VM-Series reports how much bandwidth a particular IP is using. You don't need to regularly log into a website, like a Cisco command, to see what kind of ACL it's getting. There isn't an ACL use portal event. You can go there and see how much my ACL has been getting me.

It automatically tells what rules are in place, like scheduled and additional rules. You don't need to create new rules every time. It will automatically tell you that this rule exists. 

Palo Alto's next-generation firewall is classless, and it's a bundle of everything, including malware management, bandwidth utilization, and how much each IP is costing you. It offers bandwidth utilization, DDoS protection, a next-generation firewall, and everything I need in one bundle.

You can integrate fully automated virtual firewall deployments and provisioning into existing DevOps workflows if you are a good developer. Palo Alto offers help for it, but you should have developer knowledge.

It's easy to migrate workloads to the cloud. They expose the API also. In two days, I can implement two firewalls in different regions. It's flexible. That is a feature of Azure and Palo Alto. This kind of integration is why I am able to do the migration in two days.

There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution. 

Palo Alto doesn't have much ability to load balance, so you must purchase a third-party load balancer. It would be great if they did these kinds of changes to integrate the solution with the load balancer.

I have used Palo Alto VM-Series for one year.

VM-Series is highly stable. One of our clients has been using it for one year, and we've been using it for a year and a half. There were some bugs initially, but in the past two years, it has gotten more stable. 

I give VM-Series six out of 10 for the scalability. It's one area where they need to improve. Scaling up requires a lot of effort because it's cloud infrastructure. You need to change a lot of settings and ask them to customize before it starts working. 

There are still some issues after a customer has customized the solution. Scalability is something they are working on. I am hoping that we'll see some decent scalability within a year and a half. 

I rate Palo Alto support nine out of 10. Palo Alto technical support is excellent. When you raise a ticket, you get a support call in 10 minutes. They will contact you by phone and follow up on WhatsApp to see if the issue hasn't been resolved. 

Positive

Setting up VM-Series is completely straightforward. You have to download the VM, and there is a free interface for internal and external management. You configure the interface and the root table within Azure, then the device is good to go. Lastly, you need to activate your license, and Palo Alto is integrated into Azure.

We had to purchase the license from the vendor and download the VMs from the Cloud market. You can download VM-Series from the Azure marketplace, it is a simple process. You configure everything in the management interface. Once that's done, you configure the access list so that others cannot access it from anywhere. 

After you purchase the license, you have to put the license in Azure VM. There's a similar license you have to implement in the Palo Alto portal. Your Palo Alto is ready to use once that goes through. It took us one week to deploy. An issue came up, and we had to raise a ticket, so it took seven days to complete the implementation within Azure Cloud. One person is enough to deploy it. I deployed two firewalls within seven days, so I didn't need anyone's help. One or two people are enough to manage it.

The price is fair enough. The most expensive is Cisco, followed by Fortinet, then Palo Alto. Palo Alto is very much within the range. We use Software Next-Generation Firewall Credits for licensing and consuming VM-Series. They have a cloud solution using their portal. You can go in and put it through the license.

We can't use the credits on the fly. It is not possible because they acquire new CPU RAMs. We cannot change this on the fly. It will take one day of downtime. It is not easy. This is planned downtime. You have to plan for it outside of business hours. If you do the downtime during the business day, you can't do anything. 

The Software Next-Generation Firewall Credits enable us to protect ourselves without going through a long procurement cycle. The licensing part plus implementation is very easy. You just create the firewall, and it can do everything.

I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series eight out of 10. Palo Alto is easy to use, and the price is fair compared to the other solutions on the market. I recommend Palo Alto, but you should also consider the other solutions out there. Some solutions have lots of bugs like FirePOWER. Also, the price for FirePOWER is quite high. That is not the case with Palo Alto. It has fewer bugs, requires minimum effort, and the price is fair. Everything is accessible within the same portal.

I've mainly worked with the VM-Series, and a few features have been really effective for threat prevention in our networks, like McAfee training, Accountant ID, and apps ID. These features integrate well with our existing environments and tools, such as Panorama. 

 The VM-Series scalability is fast and easy to implement, improving our security posture as our Azure network grows. The only minor issue we've faced is with the apps ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering. Tools like Loopback help us identify open or denied flows between two firewalls and manage the servers effectively. The Palo Alto system easily identifies rules and objects within roles, making maintenance straightforward.

No other major concerns, just the specific issue with Apps ID configuration. Otherwise, overall stability, VPN, IPSec, VRF, and flow management with the VM-Series have been very stable and reliable.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for 2 years.

I've had a positive experience with Palo Alto's support. They usually respond within a few hours, which is satisfactory

Positive

In my experience, Palo Alto and Fortinet offer similar quality and high-level security compared to other vendors like Cisco and Forcepoint. They stand out in terms of reliability and security features. Other vendors may not match their level of performance and security.

It is easy to maintain because we have various tools to manage and monitor the system. 

The pricing for Palo Alto is quite high compared to FortiGate, which is more affordable. I don't have the exact figures as my manager handles that, but from my research, Palo Alto's licensing costs are significantly higher.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series as an eight overall. My recommendation for others considering this tool would be to ensure they have the budget for it, as it can be expensive compared to alternatives like FortiGate. Also, they should be prepared to understand and document their application metrics thoroughly to implement the firewall correctly. 

We are using it on Azure Cloud for our internal systems, where we have set up our internal workloads. We are using it as a perimeter firewall.

We are using it because our internal workflows are on the cloud. Almost everything in our production and development uses these instances. We are using it extensively for conducting reports of the development environment. It is working fine.

It improved all compliance activities. We can close open cases. Compared to other firewalls in these cases, it improved our score on the compliance side.

We are using the complete box. We are mostly using the security services and firewall rules in Panorama.

We need to look at different variables and granular policies of various tools. This makes it easy to understand.

We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as showing us what attacks are coming in.

Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.

We have been using it for the last two years.

Stability has so far been good. We monitor the resources on the firewall to determine if there will be any spikes on the CPU, RAM utilization, or the load of the firewall. Though, we are yet not putting much load on it. 

I don't think that scaling will be a problem since we can adjust the VM-Series model that we want.

I have around 100 instances protected behind this device.

The customer support is good. They are able to give fast, readily-available solutions upon the creation of a help ticket. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We did a fresh setup for this, but it was pretty easy. We could easily integrate with the VM-Series, then just create our business servers. We were able to do this with the help of the tech team.

It took around seven to eight hours to deploy this solution and configure it to our environment.

We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple. Once we had a checklist of what to do, it was pretty easy to deploy.

Deploying Panorama has saved us a lot of time. When any incidents happen, our people are comfortable going to the Panorama logs and view the incident report to see what happened.

Initially, pricing was high. Later on, we were able to negotiate the pricing and get something that fits our budget.

The solution provides protection and there wasn't an additional cost involved, in terms of security.

We evaluated FortiGate, Cisco, and the stuff that we are using. Compared to other products, we found it a very useful part of our compliance requirements and liked its format on the graphical interface. It is also a more secure firewall compared to other existing ones in the market. Based on our evaluation, it matched our compliance requirements.

Cisco is pretty complex in nature to deploy. It is helpful to have a skilled person with at least two years of experience. 

We are happy with their features for how we are using it and what we have deployed.

I would recommend giving the solution a try and see the difference between it and your existing firewalls. Give it a shot and see the difference.

In the firewall market, it is the number one product right now. I would rate it as 10 out of 10.

We use the product to mitigate vulnerabilities for the applications running on particular VMs.

The product's most valuable feature is pricing.

Compared to Azure Firewall, the product could be better in terms of performance.

We have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for three years.

The product is stable.

It is an easy-to-scale product and suitable for enterprises.

Palo Alto's support is good. Whenever I raise a ticket, they immediately look into it and make a Zoom call.

Positive

I have used Cisco's Next-Generation Firewall before. It works better than Palo Alto.

Palo Alto's installation process is easy because we use Panorama tool to manage it. We can communicate and implement traffic policies, filtering, and other specific options with its help.

It requires two to three engineers and takes two days to complete the deployment. For maintenance, it requires a team of two engineers.

It's good to work with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

I am a firewall expert, although my job is not on the management side. I take care of the routing and switching aspects. We have approximately 1,000 firewalls in the company.

This product is a complete security system, wherein we provide direct internet access to our hub site.

The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming out, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks.

It has an advanced engine that does parallel processing for packet and deep packet inspection. It also supports user authentication.

The disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway. For example, if a person is working from home and you want a proxy then you have to rely on a secure web gateway. Palo Alto cannot do that because they don't have a cloud solution. So, if you want direct internet access and if you also want the proxies then Palo Alto is not a good choice.

I have been working with the Palo Alto VM-Series for four years.

The stability is absolutely good and there is no problem with it.

We have almost 3,000 branch offices set up across the globe.

Our intention is to increase usage of Palo Alto, adopting it for security in all of our future products.

Technical support from Palo Alto is very good.

We did not use another firewall product before this one.

With any organization, if you want to change the firewalls that are being used in production then it's a hectic task. You have some rules and engines that can be used, but it's a step-by-step process.

Migrating from an existing solution to Palo Alto needs to be done in phases. Phase one would be installing the devices. Phase two is testing a lab setup and diverting traffic, then analyzing it. Finally, the third phase is to enable other features like threat protection, malware detection, and other advanced options.

Depending on the size of the organization, if a migration is well planned then it will take three to four months to complete.

The configuration is different between our branch offices in order to meet our requirements. Some use the hardware appliance, whereas others use the software version.

We had a Palo Alto engineer who was assisting us, in-house, for our deployment. We also have support from our vendor, which provides LAN and WAN solutions.

We considered using Cisco ASA, but we chose Palo Alto because it can also act as a proxy for your hub site. Palo Alto is more advanced than the Cisco solution.

This is definitely a product that I can recommend.

Overall, it is a good product, although it would be better if they offered a cloud proxy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for testing purposes of VMs.

The main advantage of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series stems from the fact that you can access it with the help of cloud services.

With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part. Regarding Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, I am figuring out whether to use interzone or intrazone networks for the VMs in our company's environment, which is very confusing. The aforementioned aspects of the solution can be considered for improvement.

In the future, whenever I try to onboard Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it should allow for easy configuration, especially in terms of network connectivity. I want an easier setup and configuration in the product's future releases.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for around a year. My company has a partnership with Palo Alto Networks.

The technical support of Palo Alto Networks does reply to the cases or issues I file with the support team. The support is equally good for all the products that fall under Palo Alto Networks. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I rate the implementation process a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

During the implementation process of the product, I faced some issues related to the networking part and connectivity of VMs. I faced issues with how an end user could connect the VMs to a firewall or connect a firewall to VMs, but the same process was easy for me on a physical device firewall.

I am more comfortable with the physical device firewall. I am actually trying to figure out things since I am not very familiar with the VM side of Palo Alto.

I would recommend Palo Alto Networks VM-Series since it is a cheaper product compared to the other tools available in the market. Apart from Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, I usually recommend Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR and Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.