SonicWall NSa Reviews

Our primary use case for SonicWall NSa is a firewall and for analytics. I use SonicWall NSa to follow the users. Some users manage to bypass the firewall sometimes and install certain software. I track all of this "bad" behavior and block it.

SonicWall NS has a lot of valuable features. One of the best SonicWall NSa features is the ability to collect mini routers and get only one user connection.

Overall, I'm satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC. This terminal could control technical configuration from a centralized configuration with the SonicWall appliance. 

I have been using this solution since last February. However, I have worked with SonicWall since 2007.

We have about 150 users. Each employee configures up to three connections: one on a PC and one or two on mobiles.

We are happy with SonicWall NSa's tech support. We have an account manager and whenever I run into any issues, I email him directly and he calls me within the hour. This is sufficiently fast for our needs. 

We previously ran MicroTech and FortiGate. We switched because we wanted to try something new. We change the technology we use each year.

The initial setup is easy for me because I am a specialist. I previously worked for a Dell and SonicWall partner before, so I'd configured SonicWall NSa many times before. However, now as a customer, I had a SonicWall consultant deploy it.  

We used a SonicWall NSa consultant for the deployment. 

I can't speak to any ROI we've had in terms of numbers but all technology of this type will give you a return on investment because it's secure and makes your business run smoothly.

For example, as I am in the desert and there is no fiber connection here, I was using SIM cards that gave me seven GB a day. Before we deployed SonicWall NSa, I was running seven SIM cards for a total of about 50 GB per day. Right now, I use only one seven-GB SIM card.

NSa is mostly provided to customers who want to secure their perimeter. It is positioned for users above 100.

We are SonicWall partners. We propose NSa to our customers and do integrations with the firewall.

The ease of configuration is excellent. NSA has logging, alarm features, and a very useful knowledge base available on the SonicWall community site.

Certain features like SD-WAN are sometimes confusing to configure. One important feature that should be provided by default is SSL VPN, without needing a separate license.

I have used SonicWall for the past ten years.

The stability is very good. Wherever I've deployed it, there has been a zero RMA.

For scalability, I would rate it nine out of ten.

Technical support was good. The response time and quality were satisfactory.

Positive

The initial setup is simple.

Pricing is reasonable. I would rate it seven out of ten.

We did evaluate Fortinet. Both SonicWall and Fortinet are on par with each other. The choice depends on the customer's existing setup and usage of SD-WAN.

I would recommend the product to other users. I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

When it comes to securing VLANs, the primary use case for SonicWall NSa is VPNs. 

Compared to Cisco, SonicWall NSa is much easier to configure. Cisco tends to be cumbersome through the web interface. It's easy through the command line, but when you're troubleshooting something, you're usually not going through the command line. When you're digging through data trying to find if something happened, you're usually digging through the logs, through the web interface, because it should be much easier. In Cisco, the logs are odd and you have to be really particular on what you want. You have to look for specific details. 

This process is much easier SonicWall NSa. I want to know where the problem started and where it ended, that's it; and it's really clear in SonicWall NSa. Whereas in Cisco it's just not clear at all.

It would be amazing if all of the ports on the throughput devices were 10 gig or 100 gig. That would make it so much easier for me to designate 10 gigs throughout the whole network. Right now, with SonicWall NSa, I'm doing designations like "use 10 gigs through the whole network until you hit firewall." In that case, all of the traffic that has firewall enabled on it drops to one gig.

That causes issues with throughput, especially when you're talking about data stores and Ice Guzzy, or when you're splitting things out with VLANs. 

MAC address filtering on the VPN and on the firewall itself would be a good thing to add as well. If it's there, I don't know where it is.

Automation would also be good. 

The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier.

I've used SonicWall probably on and off for the last couple of years. It depends on which client I'm working with.

SonicWall NSa is stable. 

Just adding multiple sites is easy. Clustering them is pretty straightforward. But if I needed to expand them in series, that's a little bit more complicated.

I've never used SonicWall tech support. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

Hire a network guy or have a service that's going to monitor and manage SonicWall NSa for you.

This product is the firewall that protects us from attacks from the internet.

This product has kept us safe and we haven't had any breaches.

The most valuable feature for us at the moment is the VPN, given that everybody has moved to home offices.

It is easy to integrate.

Initially, it may be difficult for some people to learn and become acquainted with it. I have been using it for a long time and find it straightforward to use.

I have been using SonicWall NSA for about 20 years.

SonicWall NSA is very stable. It is refined and well-tested, and it has been around for almost 30 years. It's a proven technology.

Each model scales to a certain point. If you outgrow it, then you buy another version.

Nobody specifically uses this product but every day, all of the company traffic goes through it.

The technical support is great.

At this site, SonicWall NSA is the only firewall that has been used.

I found the initial setup to be straightforward.

The price is reasonable for what it does.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to get some training if it is your first time. It can be a little complex for new users.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The solution is deployed on-premises. We're using the latest version. 

There are around 3,000 users of this solution in my company.

I like this solution because we are focused on VPN and have many brands that need to link a VPN and have security, like ransomware, spyware, and basic protection.

The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies. The cost to maintain SonicWall is quite high.

After updating the firmware, sometimes the solution stops working. I had to do a factory reset and reconfiguration to solve the problem. 

I have used this solution for about two years.

The solution is stable. I would rate the stability as seven out of ten. 

Technical support isn't bad, but it isn't the best. Sometimes, we don't receive the answers we're looking for, so we have to look it up on the internet. 

I would rate technical support as three out of five.

Setup isn't difficult, but it's not easy either. It depends on the experience of the person who is implementing the solution.

We use four people for maintenance. There's also a support team of three people.

SonicWall's technical support helped us with implementation.

We paid about 10,000 in our currency for one packet of SonicWall NSa.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. 

It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside.

It would be useful to have an application firewall that prevents the outside world from seeing your private IPs. You don't need to publicize your private IPs to the outside world, and you can create a barrier, like a proxy server.

I have been using this solution for four years. We are using SonicWall NSA 3600.

It is very stable.

The product that we have is not scalable. You'll have to buy a firewall model that suits your requirement with a certain amount of growth built into it. They have other products that are scalable, and they are the 9600 series ones.

Currently, we have about 300 users. We plan to keep using this solution.

I have contacted their technical support, and I have received good support.

Its initial setup is absolutely straightforward. It took less than an hour. There were no issues.

I did it myself. Currently, we are maintaining it ourselves. We are not getting it done from anyone outside, but we have the subscription for SonicWall so that the security areas are taken care of by them.

Normally, when we buy any product, we buy it with a five-year service built into it. Later on, depending on the growth of the organization, we go for a new one or an upgrade.

We've been using SonicWall since 2006. When we decided on SonicWall, I had tried another product for 15 days, but it was not serving the requirements that we had. Therefore, we decided on SonicWall.

I would very much recommend this solution to others. I would rate SonicWall NSA an eight out of ten.

We use it to activate firewalls, VPN, and traffic analyzer.

The firewall feature is most valuable since my work is to analyze if there is any potential attack. SonicWall NSa gives the perfect analysis.

They need to improve their product information and product highlights because, here in Thailand, customers need to recognize SonicWall NSa. Also, Fortinet’s datasheet has a lot of information, but for SonicWall NSa, that information needs to be included. SonicWall NSa needs to make their product more user-friendly.

Sometimes, customers ask about the configuration and integration of SonicWall. Then I have to download the manual, configuration, and integration guide to explain the procedure. But for other brands, the configuration and integration are more accessible, and they also have a sample for implementation, which is missing for SonicWall.

Another area for improvement is compatibility; sometimes, my customers use SonicWall, and the partner uses some other brand, and there is an issue with compatibility matching. So if SonicWall could give us information about the compatible model and the name of the vendor with whom it is available, that would be helpful.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for two years.

It is a stable solution. I rate it eight to nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I have not contacted technical support. The partner has contacted the solution's technical support, as I am not a SonicWall expert.

The price is high. I would rate it four to five out of ten.

I would rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for the VPN and to give permissions for on-premises access.

We're using the latest update.

The solution is deployed on-premises. There are two people using this solution in my organization.

SD-WAN is a good feature.

We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us.

We have configured radius configuration. I would like to see an in-built authentication feature that would authenticate results and directly communicate to the cloud. Right now, we have a third party server for that. We are manually configuring it.

If anything goes wrong, sometimes we are unable to bring up that MPS configuration immediately. Our main VPN connection is always authenticated with the MFA option itself. When that happens, we have to revert those changes back as LDAP authentication. That isn't a good recommendation for our organization for VPN purposes. Anybody can connect directly, so they won't get two-factor authentication. It would be great for us if that was an in-built feature included in the Azure authentication.

I have used this solution for more than six years.

It's straightforward. There wasn't any kind of complexity. Deployment took one hour.

I would rate the setup as 4.5 out of 5.

We do the maintenance ourselves. Whenever there's any kind of patch release or upgrade release, we do the maintenance from our side. We have a dedicated team for maintenance.

Deployment was done in-house, but we did take some help from SonicWall.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

I would recommend that product. If those small features were included, it would be a good, all-in-one product.