Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Reviews

We use the product to mitigate vulnerabilities for the applications running on particular VMs.

The product's most valuable feature is pricing.

Compared to Azure Firewall, the product could be better in terms of performance.

We have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for three years.

The product is stable.

It is an easy-to-scale product and suitable for enterprises.

Palo Alto's support is good. Whenever I raise a ticket, they immediately look into it and make a Zoom call.

Positive

I have used Cisco's Next-Generation Firewall before. It works better than Palo Alto.

Palo Alto's installation process is easy because we use Panorama tool to manage it. We can communicate and implement traffic policies, filtering, and other specific options with its help.

It requires two to three engineers and takes two days to complete the deployment. For maintenance, it requires a team of two engineers.

It's good to work with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

Palo Alto VM Series is a firewall that makes up part of our security solution, handing IPS, IDS, and other security measures.

The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS.

The work from home features, VPN and SSL VPN, are useful and part of the GlobalProtect functionality.

I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN. As it is now, we have to manually look at the logs, which is tedious. There are no ready-made reports on that level and the information is not easily available.

I really need more advanced features that support the correlation of log files.

I have years of experience with the Palo Alto VM Series.

This firewall is quite stable and we haven't faced any kinds of issues.

It is scalable but I cannot really comment on how much because we have not taken it to that level. We have between 450 and 500 users.

I am satisfied with the technical support. However, they regularly provide training on the system so we have rarely opened a support case. 

The initial setup is straightforward and easy. 

The deployment will take a couple of hours at the max and will depend on the configuration that you are looking for. Palo Alto will give you a report that recommends policies that are based on industry standards. For example, if you have approved Telnet access then you will be warned because it is not recommended and you should be using SSH instead. They will give you lots of recommendations to warn that the configuration does not follow the standard practice and if allowed to remain then it will explain what vulnerabilities you might face in the future. This kind of report is really valuable.

I highly recommend this service compared to other vendors. It has everything included in one platform including IPS, IDS, and antivirus. By using the Palo Alto initial configuration, it is going to block many threats from day one and it is pretty easy to do. You don't have to have an in-house technical team that is capable of doing that. You don't require that kind of knowledge, which is important because many people don't understand IDS, IPS, or file blocking. They need experience. With Palo Alto, a normal person with perhaps a year of technical experience will understand how to configure the firewall and generate reports.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The Palo Alto VM-Series is a firewall that is part of our security solution.

With Palo Alto, it feels like you're using the Rolls-Royce of firewalls.

All of the next-generation features are valuable and set Palo Alto apart from other firewalls.

The application filtering, or AppiID, and URL filtering are good.

The interface with Panorama makes it very easy to use.

The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI.

The interface for Panorama has not changed greatly and could be updated.

I have been using Palo Alto VM-Series for more than six years.

It is very easy to scale. All you have to do is get access to the VM base and then spin it off into another virtual environment or send it into the cloud.  This means that you now have a data center through Palo Alto.

They have a new product called Prisma that allows you to create links between remote users working from different areas and use that to connect to the clouds in this infrastructure. It also allows you to get connectivity to that but not using a backhaul. Rather, you connect straight from wherever you are.

In the places where we have deployed this solution, they have a couple of thousand users.

The technical support is great. This is a brand and they have to protect it, so they make sure that the users get what they need.

I have experience with Check Point and Cisco, who both started improving their management interface after Panorama.

I would say that the initial setup is easy. I have been an IT professional for more than 20 years and can say that this is an example of a product where you simply have to read the manual. If you jump straight into it then you will start struggling.

During the initial setup you begin with the CLI, but you enter a command and it brings you to the GUI. Once you are in the GUI, you will see words on the tabs. All of these things are there if you look carefully.

The price of this solution is very high for some parts of Africa, which makes it a challenge. If it were lowered then it would be more popular.

I have been using Palo Alto since version 6.0, and I am currently evaluating the latest one, version 9.1.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to try the trial version first. It is good for 30 days and it can actually be used because it is the full product. You can test all of the scenarios and try the next-generation features. You can use features like the VPN GlobalProtect and actually see it work. The same with URL filtering and antivirus.

Overall, this is a great next-generation firewall.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are security and support.

The packet routing speed is very good.

There should be an option for direct integration with the Azure platform. This would allow this product to take advantage of the auto-scaling that is offered by Azure. Because I am purchasing it as a SaaS model, I should get the complete functionality.

I would like to see the direct support and product ownership from the principal vendor. Ideally, the vendor should maintain ownership and be responsible for the system, including that it is operating correctly. This would give my company a better value when purchasing the product.

The pricing could be improved.

The Panorama management license should come with this solution. We have eight nodes and we still have to purchase it separately. Everything should come with a single license, rather than something that is broken into many parts.

I have been using the Palo Alto VM-Series Firewall for a few months.

This solution is stable.

This is a scalable solution but it would be better if it had direct integration with Microsoft Azure.

Currently, we have three administrators and more than 5,000 end-users through our public website.

Technical support is very good and I would give them full marks.

This firewall is easy to implement. 

Everything from Palo Alto is good and I recommend that people implement this firewall.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The VM-Series firewall is part of our overall security solution.

The most valuable features are the User ID, URL filtering, and application filtering. These features have helped us a lot. 

The user interface could use some improvement.

I would like to see SD-WAN features added in the future.

We have been using this product for three years.

Stability-wise, this product is great.

This is a scalable solution.

I have been in contact with technical support and find that they are great.

We have the VM-Series as well as the physical appliance.

The initial setup is straightforward. It doesn't take too long to deploy, although every company their own set of requirements. For example, the level of compliance varies between companies.

When I joined the company, the VM-Series firewall was already in-place.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am the guy they call up first for the central infrastructure and configuration of the malware, firewall, and main applications, and I use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for that.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use. It takes maybe one week to learn how it works, but the suite itself is very flexible. After you install it, it's very easy to use because of the intuitive web interface.

It's great for me at the moment. I have all I need. All the traffic is very well filtered, and I believe it's the future of the firewall.

The firewall itself is very complex. You have to do a lot of research, look through all the documentation, consult, and figure out how to use it. It's not so easy as a regular firewall, like Hypertable. It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation. It would be even better if they had simple documentation on some use cases as well.

I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for about one month.

At the moment, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has been stable. 

I have used the Palo Alto Network's technical support before, and it's fine for the moment.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a VMware appliance and very simple to install. It must be turned on to change the default password and to configure the IP address, and that is all. After that, it's easy because it has a very intuitive web interface.

I implemented Palo Alto Networks VM-Series on my own.

Because I work for a university and the URL is for the institution, it's a free license for us.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a nine.

The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series needs to improve its order process. 

I have been working with the solution for two years. 

I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the product's scalability a nine out of ten. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series' deployment is not difficult. 

The solution is expensive. I rate its pricing a three out of ten. 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is an enterprise product because it is costly. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We are a service provider and I work on both shared firewall and dedicated firewall solutions for our customers. The primary focus is firewall threat protection. The rest of the features are used, albeit not too much. At this moment, it is not an overly complicated or advanced solution. 

What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to route for them to be staged and installed. From that perspective, it's easy to launch and it's good because it is more scalable.

The product is quite responsive.

The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters. It seems that you really need to upgrade to the very latest version, whereas the physical one has worked for ages now. I think that it narrowly affects the Azure deployment because I remember that we were using the VMware solution before, and we didn't have such issues.

I think that the most important point for Palo Alto is to be as consistent and compatible as possible. It should be compliant such that all of the features are consistently available between the physical and virtualized deployments.

It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto into the network management system. This is significant because you want to compare what your network management system is giving you to what Palo Alto is giving you. Perhaps in the GUI, they can allow for being able to monitor the interface traffic statistics.

The other things are pretty much great with traffic calls and sessions, but just being able to look at it on an interface physical level, would either avoid using the monitoring integration by SNMP or would create a reference, a baseline check. This would allow you to see whether your network monitoring system or tool is actually giving you correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures for being able to recognize trends and plan the capacity.

I have been using the VM-Series for almost five years, since 2016.

We have not had trouble with bugs or glitches.

The scalability is good. We haven't experienced any constraint limitations for scaling.

I have been in contact with technical support and I find them to be quite good.

In my previous work, I dealt with both physical and virtual systems. However, currently, I am only working on virtual solutions.

I have found the initial setup to be okay. But, then again, I have been using Palo Alto firewalls since 2014, so it's hard for me to say if it is difficult to become familiar with or not.

Our in-house team is responsible for maintenance.  We usually have three people who are able to work on it and do so from time to time, depending on the requirement.

I don't have too many complaints as I compare the virtualized version to the physical one. Perhaps I haven't noticed any issues because we use the proper hardware, and it was strong enough to carry the workload and remain quite responsive.

My advice for anybody who is implementing the VM-Series is to be very well prepared and test it in advance. Make sure to scope it and understand the performance implications. Also, be sure that the core features are understood and are supported on the VM. Then, test it before implementation or migration.

This is a very good product but I can't rate it as perfect because there are these little issues that are pretty common and you expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. I think there was also some limitation on how you can do the high availability on virtualized power, in Azure in particular. If these common features were consistently working on both physical and virtual deployments then I would probably rate it a ten out of ten.

As it is now, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.