SonicWall NSa Reviews

SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line.

We have security as a service, and they make recommendations about adding to the denylist and other things. That part could be more accessible and more user-friendly. I'd like to see SonicWall add a user-friendly interface where our internal team can drag and drop everything. We get the IOCs from the security companies, so these things can be filtered and blocked at the gateway level. They could add a feature where our team uploads the IOCs in an Excel spreadsheet instead of entering them in one at a time. 

We've been using SonicWall for almost seven years.

Yeah, it is much stable and we have been using NSa the previous version before also, the old device. It's all so far okay. It's stable only.

We could expand by another 20 percent, and the product would still cover us. It shouldn't be a problem. We haven't faced many challenges. It's a gateway-level firewall product, and we have 140 users.

SonicWall support is good.

We used Cisco a long time ago, but we moved to SonicWall almost eight years ago.

Setting up SonicWall isn't that complicated, but you need to know the scope — what's allowed and what isn't. But it's not as complex as Cisco. The deployment takes a couple of days, but we could probably do it faster. We upgraded from the older version of SonicWall NSa to the latest appliance in less time. 

It doesn't require a large team for maintenance. If we can manage it, anyone can. We only have three people on our team, and we can manage it without issue. 

We used the local redistributor here in Bahrain. They were knowledgeable and had SonicWall experience, so they didn't face much of a challenge. It was straightforward. The only difference is that we went with high availability — two devices. 

We have a yearly license. SonicWall's price is better than other vendors. We get a discount of about 15 percent off the initial cost.

I rate SonicWall eight out of 10. I recommend it. If you implement SonicWall, it'll be a smooth journey.

We have installed this firewall appliance across cloud and on-premises environments, our clients primarily use the VPN functionality.

If a customer wants to use the firewall, they have to pay more money for the cloud. By having a firewall solution, they can configure the VPN through the firewall, enabling them to avoid the high costs. Once you deploy the firewall in the cloud solution, then you will get protection for the gateway as well.

We are a service-based company and have implemented over 200 appliances for our customers.

The VPN functionality and intrusion prevention service (IPS) are the most valuable features.

I am a technical engineer, I have complete knowledge of SonicWall. I can do all of the configurations for the firewall. We are a service-based company and I handle the different solutions. If they need any requirement or they any action on the firewall then I can do that myself. 

The only thing that needs improvement is the VPN because we need to pay to connect the points.

I have been using SonicWall for 5 years.

We have found the NSa appliance to be stable and is comparable to FortiGate.

We have expanded the solution with several of our customers and this worked great. We have over 200 customers who use SonicWall.

Level 1 and 2 support issues are handled by our in-house team, but for more complex, level 3 issues we utilise the vendor. The call response is great.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We are a service-based provider and implement in-house.

We also implement similar appliances from Fortinet and Sophos.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. It's a good security product, so I wouldn’t give it a lower rating.

We primarily use the solution from our firewall endpoint VPN. It does have a spam filter, SSL, DPI, and numerous other security features. We've got the full license suite.

The DPI-SSL is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's handy. It's nice.

The scalability is okay.

The initial implementation isn't too bad, once you get used to the process.

We're not happy with the device itself. We're obviously moving away from it for a reason that they're a Swiss pocket-knife of devices and they do a lot. However, nothing is really done well. They don't specialize in one thing that they excel at. They try instead to do almost everything and end up failing.

We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially.

Technical support is pretty slow to respond and escalate matters.

The cost of the solution is quite high.

The solution could use an invisible DPI-SSL or something that doesn't require a certificate rewrite. Most of the other vendors are doing that now. 

The SSL VPN performance-wise is terrible.

We've been using the solution for about three years at this point.

The stability isn't the best. It freezes. We have to reboot a lot. The device just doesn't work very well.

The scalability is okay, It's marginal, however, it is possible.

We have about 300 people on-premises that use the solution.

We've been in touch with technical support, ad currently, we find them to be below average in their support capabilities. Firewall support is just adequate. Right now, with COVID and everything, you are looking at 45 minutes to an hour to get the first technician on the phone. Often it takes two or three days to get it escalated. It's slow.

I personally previously used Cisco devices at another company, and therefore I have some experience with them. 

We're currently migrating away from this solution at the moment. We do not like the way the device performs.

In terms of deployment, there is a bit of a learning curve right off the top, as I come from a Cisco ASA background. It's more object-based, a little bit different. Once you get the knack of it, it's actually pretty nice in some ways.

That said, operationally, I would recommend anybody that deploys one of these to make sure they develop their own SOP for naming conventions, for objects, object groups, object types, service groups, service objects, et cetera, so that it's easier to manage and understand what you're doing. Generally speaking, it's just a best practices kind of process for administrative work. If you've got multiple admins, it's important that everything is contiguous, meaning everybody understands and works under that same parameters. It's like any other operating environment.

In terms of maintenance, there are two of us that generally manage it and maintain it on a fairly regular basis. I'm a network engineer and the department manager, who's not a system engineer, (however, is well-versed), also can perform maintenance as needed.

We handled the implementation in-house. We did not need an integrator or consultant to assist us.

While I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, I would estimate the licensing package was about $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

Your original purchase includes the purchase of the hardware, licensing, and support. It's not a cheap device. 

We are customers and end-users.

We are currently using the NSA 4600. It's a full security appliance. We're using the latest version of the solution.

It's our primary firewall/VPN endpoint. It's used 24/7, 365. Due to the nature of our work, uptime is critical.

Ultimately, if you were to ask me if I were to recommend this device, I would say no.

I'd rate the solution at a three out of ten, simple due to the fact that the stability isn't there, and it's an expensive solution.

We use it to activate firewalls, VPN, and traffic analyzer.

The firewall feature is most valuable since my work is to analyze if there is any potential attack. SonicWall NSa gives the perfect analysis.

They need to improve their product information and product highlights because, here in Thailand, customers need to recognize SonicWall NSa. Also, Fortinet’s datasheet has a lot of information, but for SonicWall NSa, that information needs to be included. SonicWall NSa needs to make their product more user-friendly.

Sometimes, customers ask about the configuration and integration of SonicWall. Then I have to download the manual, configuration, and integration guide to explain the procedure. But for other brands, the configuration and integration are more accessible, and they also have a sample for implementation, which is missing for SonicWall.

Another area for improvement is compatibility; sometimes, my customers use SonicWall, and the partner uses some other brand, and there is an issue with compatibility matching. So if SonicWall could give us information about the compatible model and the name of the vendor with whom it is available, that would be helpful.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for two years.

It is a stable solution. I rate it eight to nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I have not contacted technical support. The partner has contacted the solution's technical support, as I am not a SonicWall expert.

The price is high. I would rate it four to five out of ten.

I would rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

We are using SonicWall NSa as a network firewall and for segmentation on internal networks. We are using this firewall on the application level ID. We are using it for specific segmentation between production LANs and between technologies.

Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case.

The solution's price could be reduced. It is expensive.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for approximately four years.

SonicWall NSa is highly stable.

The scalability of SonicWall NSa is good. We have approximately 2,000 users using it.

I did not use the support from SonicWall NSa.

We have used other solutions such as pfSense and Linux native firewalls. I prefer SonicWall NSa but if you are going to use something for an enterprise you need another solution.

We have been using the solution for many years which has made the initial setup easy for us.

SonicWall NSa is worth the money we paid.

The price of SonicWall NSa is expensive.

The solution does not require a lot of maintenance. We have a specific team now for all technology, all for all infrastructure technologies.

I rate SonicWall NSa a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for the VPN and to give permissions for on-premises access.

We're using the latest update.

The solution is deployed on-premises. There are two people using this solution in my organization.

SD-WAN is a good feature.

We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us.

We have configured radius configuration. I would like to see an in-built authentication feature that would authenticate results and directly communicate to the cloud. Right now, we have a third party server for that. We are manually configuring it.

If anything goes wrong, sometimes we are unable to bring up that MPS configuration immediately. Our main VPN connection is always authenticated with the MFA option itself. When that happens, we have to revert those changes back as LDAP authentication. That isn't a good recommendation for our organization for VPN purposes. Anybody can connect directly, so they won't get two-factor authentication. It would be great for us if that was an in-built feature included in the Azure authentication.

I have used this solution for more than six years.

It's straightforward. There wasn't any kind of complexity. Deployment took one hour.

I would rate the setup as 4.5 out of 5.

We do the maintenance ourselves. Whenever there's any kind of patch release or upgrade release, we do the maintenance from our side. We have a dedicated team for maintenance.

Deployment was done in-house, but we did take some help from SonicWall.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

I would recommend that product. If those small features were included, it would be a good, all-in-one product.

I am using SonicWall NSa as a firewall for many of its functionality, such as intrusion detection and traffic control.

The most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the control aspect of the solution.

The detection of malware can improve in SonicWall NSa.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for approximately seven years.

SonicWall NSa is stable.

The scalability of SonicWall NSa is good.

We have approximately 2000 employees and 6000 students using the solution. We have plans to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

The support is mostly online that we have received from SonicWall NSa.

I rate the support from SonicWall NSa a four out of five.

We did not use another firewall previously.

The initial setup of SonicWall NSa is straightforward. The full deployment took approximately two weeks.

We had an integrator do the implementation of SonicWall NSa for us.

I am the only one who maintains the solution.

SonicWall NSa is a straightforward firewall appliance, and most of the features are available.

I rate SonicWall NSa a nine out of ten.

SonicWall is for general security purposes.

SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there.

I also like the ability to manage all the firewalls from a single location. We can support all those things from this application. It's a cloud-based solution.

The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature. 

I've used SonicWall for about seven years.

SonicWall NSa is reliable.

It's cloud-based, so the scalability is good, and it's suitable for any size of customer.

SonicWall support is good. I rate it 10 out of 10.

Positive

SonicWall NSa is easy to understand. The initial setup for any firewall is straightforward. Having a single console is also good. The deployment time can vary depending on the client's requirements, like VPNs, routing, policies, load balancing, etc. At most, it will take one hour. I rate it 10 out of 10 for ease of setup. After deployment, SonicWall doesn't require specific maintenance. 

We are resellers, so the clients who purchase the firewall deploy it themselves. We provide support, too.

I rate SonicWall NSa nine out of 10.