Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Reviews

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.

The primary use case of this solution is as a firewall for our servers.

We are running a total of 12 servers. Four of them are hardware servers and the rest are VMware servers. We have about 80 clients running Windows 10.

The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment.

From my understanding, we used to have the Sophos firewall and a nice feature that is missing in Palo Alto is the heartbeat that monitors each endpoint. It would be helpful if Palo Alto monitored the status of every endpoint. It could be that it was not set up correctly.

In the next release, I would like to see better integration between the endpoints and the firewalls.

I have been using Palo Alto for approximately 12 months.

The stability is good.

We haven't explored the scalability yet.

We have approximately 80 Windows 10 clients, and we have approximately 85 users in our organization.

Technical support is okay. It's the same across the board, you have good techs and you have bad techs.

At times, it's a little slow in getting back to us, but nothing out of the norm.

Prior to using Palo Alto, we used a Sophos firewall.

The initial setup was complex, but we were able to work through it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We evaluated quite a few solutions before choosing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series.

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 the guy they call up first for the central infrastructure and configuration of the malware, firewall, and main applications, and I use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for that.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use. It takes maybe one week to learn how it works, but the suite itself is very flexible. After you install it, it's very easy to use because of the intuitive web interface.

It's great for me at the moment. I have all I need. All the traffic is very well filtered, and I believe it's the future of the firewall.

The firewall itself is very complex. You have to do a lot of research, look through all the documentation, consult, and figure out how to use it. It's not so easy as a regular firewall, like Hypertable. It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation. It would be even better if they had simple documentation on some use cases as well.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for about one month.

At the moment, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has been stable. 

I have used the Palo Alto Network's technical support before, and it's fine for the moment.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a VMware appliance and very simple to install. It must be turned on to change the default password and to configure the IP address, and that is all. After that, it's easy because it has a very intuitive web interface.

I implemented Palo Alto Networks VM-Series on my own.

Because I work for a university and the URL is for the institution, it's a free license for us.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a nine.

We are a solution provider and the Palo Alto VM-Series is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Our customers use this virtualized next-generation firewall as part of their security solution.

The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM. With a physical machine, you cannot the resources without adding something to the machine.

The management can be done from a single console window.

The implementation should be simplified.

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

This solution is stable.

The VM-Series is a scalable product.

The support is good.

The implementation involves setting up policies.

We deploy this product with our in-house team.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a service provider and I work on both shared firewall and dedicated firewall solutions for our customers. The primary focus is firewall threat protection. The rest of the features are used, albeit not too much. At this moment, it is not an overly complicated or advanced solution. 

What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to route for them to be staged and installed. From that perspective, it's easy to launch and it's good because it is more scalable.

The product is quite responsive.

The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters. It seems that you really need to upgrade to the very latest version, whereas the physical one has worked for ages now. I think that it narrowly affects the Azure deployment because I remember that we were using the VMware solution before, and we didn't have such issues.

I think that the most important point for Palo Alto is to be as consistent and compatible as possible. It should be compliant such that all of the features are consistently available between the physical and virtualized deployments.

It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto into the network management system. This is significant because you want to compare what your network management system is giving you to what Palo Alto is giving you. Perhaps in the GUI, they can allow for being able to monitor the interface traffic statistics.

The other things are pretty much great with traffic calls and sessions, but just being able to look at it on an interface physical level, would either avoid using the monitoring integration by SNMP or would create a reference, a baseline check. This would allow you to see whether your network monitoring system or tool is actually giving you correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures for being able to recognize trends and plan the capacity.

I have been using the VM-Series for almost five years, since 2016.

We have not had trouble with bugs or glitches.

The scalability is good. We haven't experienced any constraint limitations for scaling.

I have been in contact with technical support and I find them to be quite good.

In my previous work, I dealt with both physical and virtual systems. However, currently, I am only working on virtual solutions.

I have found the initial setup to be okay. But, then again, I have been using Palo Alto firewalls since 2014, so it's hard for me to say if it is difficult to become familiar with or not.

Our in-house team is responsible for maintenance.  We usually have three people who are able to work on it and do so from time to time, depending on the requirement.

I don't have too many complaints as I compare the virtualized version to the physical one. Perhaps I haven't noticed any issues because we use the proper hardware, and it was strong enough to carry the workload and remain quite responsive.

My advice for anybody who is implementing the VM-Series is to be very well prepared and test it in advance. Make sure to scope it and understand the performance implications. Also, be sure that the core features are understood and are supported on the VM. Then, test it before implementation or migration.

This is a very good product but I can't rate it as perfect because there are these little issues that are pretty common and you expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. I think there was also some limitation on how you can do the high availability on virtualized power, in Azure in particular. If these common features were consistently working on both physical and virtual deployments then I would probably rate it a ten out of ten.

As it is now, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We mostly use it for threat protection. Currently, I'm working on virtual solutions, and it is deployed on the cloud. We have three people who work with this solution.

I have previously worked on the shared firewall as well as dedicated firewall solutions, where we deployed it on-premises as well as on the cloud. 

The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed. From that perspective, it is easy to launch. It is also scalable.

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.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series since 2016. 

I didn't see any issues with its stability. 

It is scalable.

I found them quite good.

I found the initial setup okay. I have been using firewalls since 2014, so it is hard for me to say whether it is easy to install or not.

I would advise getting very well prepared by defining the scope and testing it in advance. Make sure that you understand the performance implications and that the core features are supported on the VM, and they are tested before the implementation or migration.

I would rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a nine out of ten. 

We use it for all next-gen firewall features such as ACLS, application monitoring, security, virtual networking, etc.

The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically. 

Its web interface is a bit outdated, and it needs to be updated. 

They can also improve the NAT functionality. We have had issues with the NAT setup.

I have been using this solution for the last five years. 

It has good stability. We haven't had any issues, and it has never been down. 

It is scalable. It has handled the network very well with our growth in the last five years. 

I haven't directly contacted them, but based on what I have heard from our network team, they are pretty quick at getting back to us. 

It was complex. We used a lot of professional service hours. 

We had an in-house team as well as a consultant. 

I would definitely recommend this solution. It comes under the top industry leaders and is comparable to other top products in this category. 

I would rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a nine out of ten.