Fortinet FortiManager Reviews

We have 20 Forti Firewalls, including FortiManager. 

We use it for firewall management as we have many objects. In FortiManager, we use one type of object and implementation, the different firewalls.

The most valuable feature is having one object on all networks, which allows for implementation only once. We can have that object on one firewall or many, and we don't have to do everything one by one.

It's easy to set up the solution. 

Stability is good within the product.

It is scalable. 

Technical support is helpful and knowledgeable. 

The central management is great.

It's very transparent. If I  am troubleshooting for people who have a problem connecting to the network, then I can just open FortiManager and see all of the history of the connection. It makes it easy if I have to adjust a configuration.

The rules need to be more flexible. I prefer configuring rules and the VPN on the standalone device, not on the manager.

I've used the solution for three years. 

It's quite stable. It's reliable, and the performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have found the product to be scalable. It's not a problem if you want to expand it. 

For example, if you want to add another 10 or 15 firewalls, will it have any problems

We have technical support in my local language. The person who assists us is senior and he's a master of FortiManager. He knows many options for configurations.

Their technical support is very responsive. They are very knowledgeable.

Positive

It's easy to set up the product. It's an easy deployment. If I have a new box, we just have to create a template, and I add a new FortiGate to FortiManager, and implementation becomes only standard configuration via FortiManager. We do any password policy, proxy pack, and other features we implement, we do so through FortiManager. Other updates, for example, a hostname or object, is from FortiManager. However, if I create any specific rule on a specific VPN, we configure that on the device.

I'd rate the solution four out of five in terms of ease of implementation.

We bought FortiManager as an option as we bought maybe five firewalls plus a license to FortiManager. The implementation site gave me only one price, which included both solutions. It was basically a package. It's moderately priced. I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of affordability.

We had average security knowledge about management, and we started with a demo project. It was from Fortigate Support. They gave me two or three months free to try out FortiManager. I'd advise people to take the time to test it and see how it works. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for managing firewalls. 

We enjoy the centralization of all roles and objects and so on.

As a manager, you can manage 50 or 40 firewalls with only one product.

The initial setup is easy.

It is stable. 

The solution should be more open to other products. FortiManager must be able to manage other products from other vendors. While it's perfect for other Forti products, it's not ideal for everything.

This is not available to work with many other vendors in the cloud. In the end, you want only one view of your own security view of everything, which is impossible with FortiManager.

Of course, this is the case with Palo Alto as well.

I've been using the solution for seven or eight years. 

It is a stable, reliable product. The solution has good performance. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. 

The product is likely scalable, however, we haven't pushed it. 

We have no experience with many numbers, such as 200 or 600 devices. We scale up to 60 firewalls. 

Forti support is quite good.

We work with Fortinet and Palo Alto.

The initial setup was not complex. However, we did the initial setup seven years ago.

We are Fortinet partners at this moment.

I'm not sure of the exact version we are on. I'm more on the sales side. 

We manage from Spain many firewalls around the world, and at this moment, it's very necessary to have FortiManager. It's just too bad we can't manage other vendors. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if it offered more outside-brand integrations. 

Our client was at the start of a network automation journey. They were a multi-brand network environment and they started investing in the FortiManager to support their vision of network and security orchestration.

That was their first step in a series of steps to build up their security capabilities or at least to get better visibility on the security topics within their environment. With a different team, they also deployed the Nessus and Lansweeper in the same environment to do automated vulnerability sweeps. Before I left that customer, there were plans of deploying additional Fortinet products - FortiAnalyzer, for example. I left the customer team in February this year, so I'm not updated anymore on what's happening there. 

This was the first time for me to work with the FortiManager or a similar product. It was an interesting learning for me personally, to understand how we could do centralized management of these firewalls. At the same time, while we were deploying the solution, I considered how useful it would be in collaboration with other Fortinet products, for example, the Analyzer, and the FortiSIEM, to really get automated security responses. That's what the vision was.

To have a quicker response to security events, the customer wanted to eventually acquire the capabilities to do automated security responses, just to make it faster to respond to security events. Even without the security orchestration, just the fact that the customer could request the firewall team to configure a job that would roll out a configuration on the firewalls and it could be deployed across all the firewalls through the FortiManager. That was a big improvement compared to deploying the new firewall rule on each firewall sequentially. So being able to roll it out to all the firewalls in the same change, was a big improvement in terms of being able to respond more quickly to any security events.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

Within the management of some features on FortiManager, specifically the management of user objects used for VPN service, FortiManager is quite weak. This was the case as of the time when we deployed them, which was one software cycle ago. I don't know whether that deficiency was fixed, however, we found it was easier to make changes to the VPN user objects, and local user objects. It was much easier to make the changes directly on the firewall than with FortiManager because in FortiManager you have to go through different windows, and even the CLI, in order to make the changes to the user database. It's just a matter of improving the UI, being able to manipulate objects that could be manipulated using the firewall GUI for example. It's just about expanding the features of the product so that whatever you can do on the firewall, you can also do it at the same level of convenience on the FortiManager.

I used the solution for a while. I used it just last year. The project ended in February this year, so it has been several months now since I last touched FortiManager.

The solution was stable. I left that customer last February, so I don't know how it is now. At the point I left, it was stable. 

With regards to scalability, with the on-prem solution, I would say it won't be as scalable as a more virtual solution, either on the cloud or on-prem. With virtualized environments, you can scale easily. With appliances, you do have hard limits in terms of capabilities. Once the number of devices exceeds the limits of the product, then you have no choice but to upgrade to a higher model of FortiManager.

We have two clients who use FortiManager in their environment.

The overall support was okay. We only had issues really when we raised several tickets to help solve the synchronization of the user objects, I felt it took much longer than it should have. It took several weeks before we finally definitively were told it won't work and this is what we need to do. Therefore, it took much longer than I felt it should have taken. For other topics that we raised during the deployment, they were quite helpful, however.

I helped the project team in implementing it. It was the first time that we implemented FortiManager.

The initial setup was straightforward. If you wanted just to do the basic configuration, it's quite straightforward.  

That said, it was straightforward except we had some big issues, and big challenges in our first attempt to put all the devices in the same ADOM as each device had a fair amount of custom firewall rules and custom firewall objects already existing, and each firewall at the branch site was also acting as a local VPN hub. 

We had a lot of local user objects and we discovered quite quickly that when we had a lot of user objects for the same user, but on different firewalls, when we wanted to put them into the same ADOM, it created a huge challenge in synchronizing user objects because these user objects on different firewalls are considered to be different user objects owned by the same physical person. They had the same username and the same authentication credentials, so it created an issue in synchronization.

Eventually, after consulting with Fortinet, we had to redo our design. That was the only hiccup we had in the design during implementation. Had we known about this requirement, had we understood that particular technical constraint earlier, our design from the beginning would have been much different.

The deployment itself took four months. 

We had two technical people who set up the solution, however, neither were full-time. You only really need one full-time person.

The licenses that we purchased as part of the project were for three years. I don't remember the price anymore. I can't recall the monthly license fee. In any case, the licenses were purchased for three-year periods.

I'd rate the product eight out of ten.

FortiManager is software that enables you to manage the solution from a central point. For instance, we had 50 sites and were able to manage all the sites from a central management console. This solution is deployed on-premises. My company was using version 7.

There were 5,000 people using this solution in my company.

We had a security policy that was deployed on all the devices, and we managed it from only one place. We didn't have to manage it on each piece of equipment. Second, regarding the configuration of SD-WAN, we could build configuration templates on FortiManager and push the templates from FortiManager to the different Fortigate units.

This solution enables you to centralize the rules and the configuration of all the equipment.

One of the biggest limitations is the grammar of the API – not the API itself. It was not very well done.

The CLI could be enhanced.

Stability was good.

Scalability was very good.

Technical support was excellent. We bought the optional support, so we paid an additional fee.

We had dedicated support just for us. We had one person who was really good and helped us design the solution. We had a very good design, so the deployment was good afterward.

Setup is of medium difficulty. It's not that complicated, but it's not easy. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate it a 3. It's not a simple plug and play, but it's not that difficult either.

For the design and deployment, we used four people. For maintenance, we only needed one part-time engineer per year.

We used an external company to run the deployment, and it took us three months to finish the design of the solution and three months to deploy all the boxes and all sites.

We had some people who were helping us deploy because there were several sites all over the country, so there were some people who were going on-site.

For the licensing fee, we paid around 10,000 to 15,000 euros. 

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

My advice is to know your product before you start using it.

We use Fortinet FortiManager to manage over 2,000 firewalls. We use the solution for reporting, implementing, and deploying policies and objects to the firewalls.

Fortinet FortiManager has saved us time by allowing us to create a lot of scripts that can be deployed at the same time to all the firewalls.

The firewall configuration has more capabilities than the other firewall management systems that I have worked with.

The reporting details have room for improvement.

I have been using Fortinet FortiManager for six months.

I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiManager a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Fortinet FortiManager an eight out of ten.

We previously used Sophos Firewall Central Management and transitioned to Fortinet FortiManager, primarily due to its industry reputation.

Fortinet FortiManager is costly.

I would rate Fortinet FortiManager a ten out of ten.

I recommend Fortinet FortiManager because it can be used for firewall configuration, reporting, PPMs, and deploying scripts.

We use FortiManager for centralized management of all Fortinet products. I have done SD-LAN configuration for multiple branches through FortiManager. It was easier for me to do it through this solution and push it to all the the branches.

Centralized configuration is the most helpful feature. I like the ability to create templates and push them to all the devices at the same time. I also like that I can see the the logs with one device to provide zero touch on all other products.

I would like to be able to manage other products such as Endpoint and FortiAnalyzer through FortiManager. That is, the integration with other solutions needs to be improved.

It would be helpful if we can manage all Fortinet products with a simpler GUI. FortiManager's GUI is complicated in comparison to that of FortiGate.

I've been working with Fortinet FortiManager for a year and a half.

I would rate FortiManager's stability at nine out of ten.

On a scale from one to ten with one being the worst and ten being the best, FortiManager's scalability would be eight. It is a good solution for medium and enterprise companies.

FortiManager's technical support is great, and I'd give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

FortiManager's initial setup is a simple process.

On a scale from one to ten with one being the highest price and ten being the lowest price, I would rate FortiManager's price at three.

We compared FortiManager with Palo Alto Panorama. The user interface for Panorama is more user-friendly than that of FortiManager. Using certain commands and troubleshooting are also easier with Panorama.

Overall, I would give FortiManager a rating of seven out of ten.

I use Fortinet FortiManager for managing my FortiGate devices.

What I like best about Fortinet FortiManager is that you can use it with FortiGate. You can manage FortiGate devices through it. I also like that Fortinet FortiManager allows you to manage multiple FortiGate devices from a single console.

The Fortinet FortiManager dashboard is good, which is another pro of the product.

Areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiManager are scalability and stability.

I've been working with Fortinet FortiManager for three years. I'm still using the product.

Fortinet FortiManager could be more stable, so it's a seven out of ten for me.

I'd give five out of ten for Fortinet FortiManager, scalability-wise. It's in the middle.

I have experience contacting the technical support for Fortinet FortiManager. I'm giving the team an eight out of ten because I found it challenging to get support. Fortinet FortiManager technical support can be difficult to contact.

Positive

Fortinet FortiManager has a simple setup.

We implemented Fortinet FortiManager because it's just a process of downloading the product.

Fortinet FortiManager is a low-priced product.

I evaluated Cisco and Palo Alto Networks, but I found Fortinet FortiManager better and easier to manage.

I'm using Fortinet products, Fortinet FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer.

My company has between three to four Fortinet FortiManager users.

Fortinet FortiManager is a product I recommend to others.

I'm rating the product as nine out of ten because it still has room for improvement stability-wise. Its technical support also needs improvement.

My company is a Fortinet partner.

I primarily use FortiManager for network automation and central management.

FortiManager's most valuable feature is central management.

In the next release, FortiManager should include more protection features.

I've been working with FortiManager for about a year.

FortiManager's stability is excellent - I would rate it ten out of ten.

FortiManager is easy to scale up and down.

Fortinet's technical support is hands-on and provides a good service.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

FortiManager is a bit expensive - I would rate its pricing three out of ten.

FortiManager is most suitable for the enterprise level. I would recommend FortiManager and give it a rating of ten out of ten.