Fortinet FortiADC vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

Fortinet and VMware are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Fortinet is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.7, while VMware is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.3. Fortinet holds a 9.0% mindshare in ADC, compared to VMware’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiADC

Read 21 Fortinet FortiADC reviews

4,503 Views
3,621 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Read 8 VMWare Avi Load Balancer reviews

2,618 Views
1,687 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiADC

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiADC and VMWare Avi Load Balancer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer Report (Updated: September 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

September 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 801,634 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

8th

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiADC is 9.0%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Najdat Turani

Technical Manager/Division of Computers Systems, Networks, and Maintenance at YU

Aug 16, 2024

Provides a user-friendly web interface, but the number of components requiring additional licenses could be reduced

I use Fortinet ADC solution for SSL offloading, certificate management, and load balancing The solution enhances performance by efficiently balancing the load across multiple backend servers. It ensures client experiences remain unaffected even if a server starts or encounters issues.…

Read full review

Nick Wang

Analyst at Nomura Securities

Jul 21, 2023

A flexible and easy-to-scale solution with a good interface and infrastructure

In my company, we use Avi Networks Software Load Balancer as a global load balancer since its best points are its interface, and good infrastructure, making it a very modernized tool There are different region servers for which we require a global load balancer in our organization, so we prefer…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Ease of use in deploying and having it up and running requires minimal knowledge."

"Content caching and content compression are good features."

"I like the solution's load balance with DNS intelligence."

"The solution enhances performance by efficiently balancing the load across multiple backend servers."

"It's a good product because it supports all the features that ADC solutions in the market can support, like F5 solutions, for example, such as the LTM of F5."

"We can do patches offline without causing customers outages. The web application firewall features, especially those related to the OWASP Top Ten, provide automated protections. This allows more flexibility in patching the backend applications. Additionally, it offers visibility into the requests being made to the applications, and you can't protect what you can't see."

"The solution provides high-level services such as availability, redundancy, and load balancing between servers."

"Although FortiADC has multiple features that I like, the global DNS is the most helpful. It is primarily useful for customers with huge environments and at least two data centers. FortiADC can act as your DNS server. It can check which data center has the lowest latency, and route traffic to that one. It's an intelligent DNS."

More Fortinet FortiADC pros

"What's most valuable in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its deployment capability, the ability to deploy in a dispersed service, with the service engines that can disperse and have a single control plane that can control the load balancing services across any available platform, wherever needed. The analytics of Avi Networks Software Load Balancer and flexibility of deployment are its most valuable features and the reasons why many people buy it."

"The solution is stable."

"The WAF - the web application firewall itself - is great."

"Its visibility and login mechanism are the best parts. In addition to the great visibility it has a great dashboard and an easy to configure graphic user interface, a beautiful GUI."

"The friendly user interface is valuable."

"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."

"The most valuable feature of the solution for my organization is its UI since it allows us to see the clusters while providing a very specific and good overall understanding."

"The interface and software features are the most valuable aspects of this solution."

Cons

"I had a terrible experience with Fortinet support. I only used support once when I bought the solution. I got no response for two days. However, I believe that it's no longer the case. Fortinet solutions have problems when they're launched. For example, we had issues with Fortinet's authenticator when it came out. We also had trouble with FortiNAC in the beginning."

"One of the product's areas of improvement includes reducing the number of components requiring additional licenses, such as antivirus and IDS, which are already covered by our firewall."

"Fortinet has some drawbacks, and it can be a bit challenging to scale."

"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."

"Fortinet FortiADC should include an advanced-level SD-WAN."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"FortiADC is complex to configure so the interface should be improved."

"The configuration is relatively complex."

More Fortinet FortiADC cons

"One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products. Integration could be improved in the solution so that you have a more unified control plane with it and other data center security and networking products that VMware sells. There has been a bit of a lag on the roadmap of new features that have come out there recently, but better interoperability with the hyperscale environments such as the AWS, Azure, GCPs of the world, and simpler deployment and interoperability with those existing tools, are areas that are receiving attention and could use additional attention today. These are the areas for improvement in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer."

"Avi Networks Software Load Balancer needs to improve its documentation."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive."

"The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective."

"It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."

"I did not go with it because their APM module is a different product altogether. It's a common thing that companies do. They sell something and then they add on top of it as a different product. It is a type of marketing strategy. But when it comes to the overall management, it takes a lot of time to really look into it."

"In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They offer a perpetual license."

"The product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."

"I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."

"Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better."

"The price is competitive"

"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."

"I rate Fortinet FortiADC's pricing one out of ten. It is fixed."

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

More Fortinet FortiADC pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."

"With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."

"I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."

"The tool is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.

See all answers

Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?

I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?

The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.

See all answers

What do you like most about Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The tool is expensive. It is not cheap. The product must be cheaper.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective. The product does not provide deep troubleshooting features. The solution must provide public IP features. F5 provides such features.

See all answers

Comparisons

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 25% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 23% of the time

NetScaler vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 14% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 8% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiADC Competitors

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 32% of the time

NetScaler vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 31% of the time

HAProxy vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 9% of the time

NGINX Plus vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 8% of the time

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiADC

September 2024

Download Fortinet FortiADC product report

Buyer's Guide

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

August 2024

Download VMWare Avi Load Balancer product report

Also Known As

FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC

Avi Software Load Balancer

Learn More

Fortinet

VMware

Overview

Fortinet FortiADC is a robust application delivery controller (ADC) that delivers application optimization, application security, and application availability. FortiADC is a valued offering from Fortinet, which is widely recognized as a trusted supplier of dynamic security solutions worldwide. FortiADC offers dynamic security functions (AV, DDoS, and WAF) in addition to advanced application connectors for a simplified deployment and complete transparency to an organization's networks and applications. FortiADC offers three primary deployment options: physical machine, virtual machine, (VM) and cloud solution options.

Fortinet FortiADC Benefits

FortiADC security protocol: FortiADC integrates with FortiSandbox to improve the overall antivirus security protections where every file is scanned for known and unknown malicious risks. If a file is identified as malicious or problematic, it will be blocked in the future.
SSL protocol: FortiADC securely uses the most up-to-date cryptography to provide exceptional encryption and decryption using a hardware-based SSL ASIC. FortiADC offers complete transparency to inspect all traffic for threats, improves server response time, and reduces backend server load, SSL inspection and SSL offloading. FortiADC integrates seamlessly with Gemalto’s SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM).
FortiADC connectors: FortiADC Fabric Connectors offer open API-based integration and coordination with numerous software-defined networks (SDNs), third-party partners, and cloud management providers. Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide deep open and turnkey integration with recognized third-party vendors such as AWS, K8s, OCI, and SAP, in multi-vendor solutions, improving scalability, simplified management, and automation.
Business stability: FortiADC load balancing for on-premise global server load balancing (GSBL) and in the cloud (FortiGSBL Cloud) will ensure users can maintain a reliable and available network by improving the ability of scaling applications throughout numerous data centers to reduce application response times and enhance disaster recovery. Users are able to define protocols based on network latency concerns, overall data performance, and site availability.

Fortinet FortiADC Features

Application availability
- 4-7 application load balancing: DNS, HTTPS, RTMP, RADIUS, MySQL and more
- External fabric connectors: Splunk Integration, AWS/OCI Connector, Kubernetes Service.
- Security fabric connectors: FortiSIEM, Fortigate BanIP Integration, FortiAnalyzer, and more.
- Deployment modes: High availability (AA/AP Failover), Router mode, transparent mode (switch), one-arm mode (proxy with X-forwarded for support.
Web application firewall (WAF)
- Security services: Captcha support, cookie support, HTTP header security, XML/SOAP/JSON validation, CSRF protection, API gateway, and more.
- Application security: Web attack signature, bot detection, web vulnerability scanner, OWASP Top-10 Wizard, API protection and more.

Application enhancement
- HTTP and TCP improvement: TCP buffering, HTTP compressions/decompression, HTTP caching (dynamic and static objects), Bandwidth monitoring using quality of service (QoS), TCP buffering, and more.
- Authentication offloading: Two-factor authentication (Fortitoken/Fortitoken Cloud and Google Authentication), NTLM, AUTH2.0, SAML 2.0 (SP and Idp) RADIUS, LDAP, Kerbos, and local.
- Networking: Integration with Ansible, Cisco ACI, OpenStack and Nutanix, NVGRE and VXLAN support, VLAN and port trunking support, IPv6 Support (SLB, firewall, routing and interfaces), Dynamic NAT, Hide NAT, Static NAT for added scalability and flexibility.
- Management: Syslog support, SNMP using private MIBs with threshold-based traps. REST APIs, VDOMS, data analytics, real-time monitoring graphs, role-based monitoring, intuitive reporting, FortiView integration, and more.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is an application delivery controller (ADC) platform. The solution provides scalable application delivery across any infrastructure and allows your organization to deliver multi-cloud application services, such as load balancing, autoscaling, application security, container networking, and web application firewall. It is designed with 100% software load balancing to ensure a fast and secure application experience. Additionally, Avi Networks Software Load Balancer offers elasticity and delivers intelligence across any environment.

The Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is unique because

It can scale from 0 to 1 million SSL transactions per second in minutes.
It can achieve 90% faster provisioning and 50% lower TCO than a traditional appliance-based approach.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Product Highlights

Troubleshoots application issues in less than a minute.
Alerts you of potential risks with SSL certificates and TLS versions used.
End-to-end timing for each transaction to help solve end-user experience issues.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Features

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Automated application delivery
Seamless integration with the CI/CD
Built-in analytics
End-to-end visibility
Actionable insights
Security
“Network DVR”-like capability to record and replay specific transactions
Google-like search filters transactions based on device, location, errors, etc.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Avi Networks Software Load Balancer. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Multi-cloud application services: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer provides consistent, enterprise-grade application services, including load balancing, WAF, and container networking across heterogeneous environments. The multi-cloud application services can be deployed on bare metal, VMs, or containers in any data center or public cloud environments.

Faster application provisioning: With this solution, you gain automation with 100% REST APIs and self-service like public cloud.

Better business decisions: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer uses analytics to deliver application insights and help you drive more intelligent decisions.

Containerized applications: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is a proven solution to deploy container-based workloads in production environments using Kubernetes/OpenShift/Tanzu clusters. It includes multi-cluster, multi-site support for containerized applications.

Lower TCO: The solution is 100% software, and does not require any proprietary hardware. In addition, because it offers on-demand autoscaling, there is no over-provisioning. Lastly, point-and-click application troubleshooting means there is no need for a black box.

Software-defined architecture: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is designed with a software-defined architecture with a centralized control plane (Avi Controller) and distributed data plane (Avi Service Engine). Because of this, elastic autoscaling is made easy.

Better end-user visibility: The solution gives you granular visibility into end-user experiences and server response in real time. It also empowers application owners with end-user stats to optimize and improve apps.

Application health score: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer summarizes analytics information into a helpful health score that provides a quick snapshot of the overall applications. The health score it provides is determined by server response time, resource usage, anomalous traffic, and security posture.

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

September 2024

Free Report: Fortinet FortiADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.

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