Fortinet FortiADC Reviews

The situation is a seminar session for about 250 users who need access to a BI server through their client in-house application. It's look like this:

Five Servers -> FortiADC -> FortiWLC-> Meru Wireless 

Even though FortiADC is not completely working for me, overall it helps me provide workload distribution to the servers, as expected.

Of course the troubleshooting tools. I think the troubleshooting command is easy and useful. Because ADC is the intermediary between the servers and the end-user application, it gives thorough information about the traffic, what the problem is.

The L7 Persistent load-balancing algorithm has not worked for me after having tested it many times with my customer's in-house application. I'd like to suggest that the company make sure that all load-balancing algorithms work properly with most applications, even those that are in-house apps, because this is the main requirement of ADC.

After I created a virtual server, the servers are still reachable from the client side by a Ping command. That did not happen with F5. I have to work around it 
by setting up a traffic policy.

I did not test the SSL decryption feature but it's an essential point that FortiADC ensure they can support all the newest encryption methods and always be up to date.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

 I have not engaged ADC support.

I think they can make it easier. The company's homework is to redesign those menus to configure with the smallest number of steps.

If FortiADC wants to compete - and having used F5 LTM for a year - in my opinion:

1. They should make the Knowledge Base easier to access. They need a "cookbook" like Fortigate. They should modernize their web community appearance.
2. From my experience with the F5 support team, it is quite easy to access and very fast to respond. I was very impressed with them, compared to other vendors.
3. They need to provide a longer test license (30-45 makes sense, not 15 days which is what they offer currently). Have your partner manage the test
   license. With F5, for example, I can manage the license through the web with a few clicks to select product - done.
4. They should go advanced by providing a set of APIs to customize for specific requirements.

Mixed server environment with Apache Servers, IIS Servers and internal applications. Load balance all the servers through VIPs to equally distribute all the connections among the servers and SSL Offloading. We’ve used it to reduce our server farm, lowering cost, and effectively use all the servers at once.

The boxes were used to load balance the environment, making it more reliable, and improving the performance and response of the applications.

• SSL Offloading
• VM availability
• L7 load balancing

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

No real stability issues, the system is good. Had a few problems but did a firmware upgrade and it solved them; not sure if it was a firmware problem.

Had no need to scale it up, so all good.

I didn't need to use support for this solution, but usually Fortinet support is good, not great but good.

I’m a F5 engineer as well and, to be honest, I do prefer BIG-IP, but as I’ve worked at Fortinet partners I had to deploy some of these. Before FortiADC, I deployed a FortiBalancer (the old ADC); it was a great improvement from FortiBalancer to FortiADC.

The initial setup is sort of easy but you go through a lot of screens to do it.

Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better.

I’m used to deploying F5 BIG-IP load balancer and all of its modules. Either it’s way easier or I'm more used to it.

It’s easy to use, but it could have more features, when comparing it to a F5.

Make a checklist before going into it hands-on. This will make it faster to become familiar with the application's behaviour; not all the apps can be load balanced. The best way is to implement it is to have PATs or VIPs from the firewall pointing to FortiADC virtual servers. Check into the best load balance method and, as I said, check app behaviour before choosing it. Try not to set it as round robin.

We use the solution for deploying applications on local servers. Most customers use it for local traffic management and use the benefits of a security profile.

Fortinet FortiADC’s basic feature is present in all models, providing control over load balancing. Additionally, extra features found in FortiADC include bridging, which enables load balancing for CDB, UDP, and SDP.

The solution includes all the features, as well as support for global traffic management and local traffic management tools. It offers forward compatibility to integrate smoothly with Sandbox environments.

The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily. It has its own antivirus.

The solution’s pricing could be improved.

I have been using Fortinet FortiADC as an integrator for five years.

The product is stable.

The solution is scalable. Every virtual machine can expand easily. You must make size coding for three or five years for flexibility. FortiADC doesn’t have restrictions on the number of applications. It provides high availability and built-in security features like antivirus and sandbox integration.

Technical support is very good.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward and depends on the number of nodes and applications. Deploying one node takes around 50 minutes.

It depends on the node and server application, source address, communication delivery control, URL, or port ID.

The product is cheap and has a yearly license.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

The deployment and the audio trimming may take one day.

FortiADC is stable and operates on a proprietary operating system. One advantage it has over some competitors, which run on Linux, is the strength of its operating system. This strengthens its security control. It offers a good service.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I am an IT integrator and we sell ADC, mainly Fortinet FortiADC.

In our last project, we used Fortinet FortiADC for load balancing some specific applications for telecom.

The most valuable feature is the SSL offloading capacity.

It is easy to manage and easy to configure.

The initial setup could be simplified.

It's a stable solution.

They have different appliances to cover low performance, less performance, and big-box data that supports large capacities. 

With our customers, we have 200,000 end-users.

Technical support for me is okay and I don't have any problems with them. I have no complaints.

The initial setup was not complex, but it was not simple either.

These types of machines have complexity, but with a good engineering team, it is much easier to do the jobs.

We have a team of two to deploy and maintain this solution.

The design, installation, and configuration took one week.

I would rate Fortinet FortiADC a nine out of ten.

I use Fortinet FortiADC for load balancing for different data centers.

My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. It provides a great layer when it comes to SD-WAN and other security capabilities. It offers many models for a host of environments. 

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

The price of the product is problematic.

The configuration is relatively complex. 

The solution is stable. 

I have had no need for customer support. 

The solution has a relatively complex setup. 

We used resellers for the deployment. 

The solution could be more cost-effective. 

The solution is deployed both on-cloud and on-premises. 

I rate Fortinet FortiADC as an eight out of ten.

We use this product for application delivery control and global load balancing.

The most valuable feature is its simplicity.

The interface is user-friendly.

It would be good if they built in a fully functional web application firewall.

They should update this product more often.

We have been using FortiADC for three years.

FortiADC has been pretty stable and reliable for us.

We have a fixed integration so scalability is not relevant for us.

Technical support is excellent and we have no issues with them. You can call them from the device itself, after which they come online and they are pretty good.

We had some complexity when it came to the initial setup, although I think that it was because of us, rather than the product. It took us a total of five days before we went online, which included setup and testing. This involved connecting to our backend networks, creating the VLANs, and so forth.

Overall, it was not difficult and the vendor gave us great support.

We evaluated application delivery controllers and global load balancers from other vendors before choosing FortiADC.

Overall, this is a good product, it does what it's supposed to, and I would recommend it to anybody. My main complaint is that the WAP functionality is very primitive.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use FortiADC as a disaster recovery solution. We deploy FortiADC as a high-availability (HA) cluster at the datacenter, and as a standalone unit at the DRC.

FortiADC helps application availability and improves user-response time. In addition, the price is competitive.

The main feature that we use is GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing). GSLB makes the customer's network more reliable by scaling applications across multiple datacenters. GSLB as a disaster recovery solution can direct traffic based on site availability.

I think it would be helpful if Fortinet put more video examples on their cookbook site.

The system is quite stable so far.

I like all the products in the Fortinet family, they are simple to use and you can integrate a virtual server in a couple of minutes. If you have the topology, if you have the network, you can make a virtual server batch in a couple of minutes. It uses the same FortiOS regardless of the product. 

The product needs more development because it has issues with SSL traffic and encrypted traffic. It's been a little while since I used it and maybe things have improved but with Fortinet you can use a lot of features near the load balancing mechanism.

Fortinet decided to cut the product into two pieces, because FortiWeb has a lot of security features, but FortiADC has a load balancing mechanism. Customers need a fast solution with a load balancing solution and a web application firewall. If you are using FortiWeb, you can use FortiGuard Intelligence Service. But in the FortiADC, it has more load balancing features, but it lacks security features. 

I used this solution for one year. 

In comparison to its competitors, I rate this solution a five out of 10.