Fortinet FortiManager Reviews

One site we worked on had something like 10 firewalls in different branches, and the security admin there needed to monitor the firewalls from a centralized place, so we deployed FortiManager and configured it so he could monitor things from one place. 

At another site, we use it in backup mode for automatic backup.

The product is a combination of management and monitoring from the same interface.

The areas that need improvement are implementation and support. In terms of implementation, it mainly needs clear documentation. There are many features that are not mentioned in the documentation.

We've been using FortiManager for almost one year. On some sites we use the latest version, and for other sites we use version 6.4.

We have done implementations of a number of Fortinet products such as Email and FortiWeb firewalls. We have implemented the portfolio of Fortinet products.

For FortiManager, technical support is good, but it's not excellent. It's not perfect because there are times when it takes longer for them to reply to cases. And, as I mentioned, sometimes we can't find a feature in the documentation.

It's easy to install and it takes about two days.

I recommend FortiManager if you have more than FortiGate firewalls or more Fortinet products.

In terms of users of the solution, our clients are between medium and enterprise in scope.

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.

FortiManager is used for centrally managing many FortiGate firewalls. It is a very good solution if you are using several of them.

The most valuable feature is the central configuration for firewall policies. This simplifies the management of many devices and acts as a central firewall policy object. It is sometimes used to deploy a VPN, where that is used to connect many FortiGate instances.

You don't need to log in to the devices many times. Instead, you can locally manage and copy the configuration to several of them.

Fortinet develops many different solutions but only some of them can be managed using FortiManager. For example, if you have a load balancer then you have to have a separate manager. Having FortiManager work with all of the Fortinet products would be a good improvement.

Some older versions of FortiManager, perhaps three or four years ago, had some issues with instability due to bugs. However, now, it is a very stable product.

It is easy to scale, although it can be costly. There is a limit to the number of devices that it can support, but additional FortiManagers can be used in this case.

I have been in contact with the Fortinet technical support several times, and the support is good. The people are nice and they will also help you online.

Until you have experience with it, this device is not simple to set up. You have to spend perhaps five to seven days to configure it properly, including the automation of certain tasks.

If you have a single person for the implementation, it will take approximately two weeks to deploy.

Overall, I find that this is a good solution and it gives me everything that I want. I would recommend it and people should definitely try it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

FortiManager is a virtual appliance, you can have it in a cloud, buy your own license, or pay for the solution as a service. It's very helpful because you can manage many products from other customers, just from the cloud, which is where you administrate domains for all the customers you might have. You only have one point of deployment of the new FortiGates, for example, FortiSwitches, FortiAPs with a single click that you do not need to deploy the configuration on a unit itself. So it means, for example, you can just send the new boxes to new offices and from the cloud FortiManager, you just let some technical guy send it to the internet. It gets the serial number of the FortiManager. It can be paired and the configuration can be directly downloaded. You don't even need to touch the box physically. So that's an amazing feature. 

For the whole security fabric from Fortinet, with a simple click you can see if some workstations or services are affected by an attack. You can really easily quarantine it, check the solution, and fix it. It's very good from a security perspective. 

Fortinet is releasing quite a lot of new versions and I would say that most of the versions are not well tested before they're pushed out. Even the new versions sometimes are a bit buggy before it's all correct.

I have been using FortiManager for six to seven years. 

We don't have any issues with stability. 

Scalability is good. 

Our support was often sent to a foreign country and they didn't speak good English. But the second level of support was all perfect.

Checkpoint has a kind of manager that is similar. I think Palo Alto and Cisco have something similar as well.

The initial setup was straightforward and so simple. You don't need to know the functionality that much and it guides you on how to deploy it correctly. It's quite simple to set up as a solution.

The deployment takes a few days. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

It does not make much sense if you only have one FortiGate. If you have multiple devices and you can share some kind of templates or configuration template for security rules then this is a product you should use.

In the next release, there should be a little bit better of a deployment for applications that should also be relevant for mobile phones.

It is used for the standardized configuration of all the firewalls that we have installed for our customers.

The capability of centralized management is valuable. We can configure all firewall boxes with the same configuration.

The compatibility with legacy products should be better. It would also be nice if the software could manage other devices from Fortinet and third parties.

We have been using it for a short period. It has been almost six months. We are a reseller, and currently, we have six to eight technicians who are using it.

It is fine for us. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

There is something called zero-touch provisioning, where you can add a new device without any configuration. You just add it to FortiManager and then forget about it.

FortiManager could be simpler.

I'm not using FortiManager at this company, but I've been using it with different organizations for maybe five years. So haven't been using it continuously. Sometimes it's a different solution.

I would say that FortiManager is stable.

It's fairly easy to scale up FortiManager. I think it's suitable for large businesses. 

Fortinet's support is good. 

Setting up FortiManager can be complex because it involves changes from other devices and a lot of configuration. The time needed for deployment depends on the environment and size. For a small environment, it takes two or three days if it's the environment.

FortiManager is not too expensive.

I rate FortiManager seven out of 10. I would recommend it to others.

Fortinet FortiManager can be used to manage all your Fortinet solutions. We are using it as a VM solution.

Fortinet FortiManager allows a full view of all the devices on the network from one location.

Fortinet FortiManager integrates will with other Fortinet solutions, such as FortiAnalyzer.

The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions other than Fortinet.

I have been using Fortinet FortiManager for years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable, it is good for large companies to manage their devices.

We have six customers using this solution.

The technical support is very good.

We have one engineer that does the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

The license model they use depends on the size and is not limited to the users.

The solution is good but we want to move to the cloud at some point to save money on infrastructure. For example, on the cloud, we would not need a server room or data center building.

I would recommend this solution to others. 

I rate Fortinet FortiManager a ten out of ten.

I have used the FortiManager to implement and manage the Fortigate solution in one company that we implemented Fortinet. We use the FortiManager to manage all the Fortigates, firewalls, projects, and old projects.

The best feature of Fortinet FortiManager is its ease of use. It is easy to manage the firewall from Fortinet FortiManager. Additionally, the interface is very good.

The FortiManager is more complex and they can make it easier to use the VPN manager. All other features are okay. However, the VPN manager is more difficult and can cause some issues in the environment, if you do not have the experience to use it.

I used Fortinet FortiManager within the last 12 months.

The stability is good.

The scalability of Fortinet FortiManager is very good.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is easy.

The amount of technicians you would need for the implementation of Fortinet FortiManager depends on the environment. If you have many firewalls managed by FortiManager, you need more people. However, one person can manage the FortiManager, but you have the Fortigate environment to manage, you need more people, for example approximately four for the environment.

I encourage the use of this solution. It is very good because they make it easy to manage the environment.

I rate Fortinet FortiManager a nine out of ten.