We use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for our company's customers, especially those who use Azure Firewall to secure their environment but still want a third-party firewall from companies like Fortinet FortiGate and Palo Alto in their environment. Whenever our company's customers want to opt for a third-party firewall, we suggest firewall products from companies like Fortinet FortiGate and Palo Alto. There have been cases where our company's customer who already uses firewall products from Fortinet FortiGate and Palo Alto deployed on an on-premises model want to shift the same product to the cloud, going on the good experience they have had with the products. If our company's customers are not interested in purchasing a third-party firewall, my company suggests the cloud-native firewall provided by Azure, specifically for their landing zone environment.
VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall w/Advanced Threat Prevention (PAYG)
Palo Alto NetworksExternal reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
An easy-to-maintain product that provides security and can be smoothly installed within a couple of hours
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Regarding Palo Alto, my company normally does a high availability configuration for our customers, which are active-active and active-passive. There are multiple add-on packages a customer can choose from in Palo Alto, including antivirus, web filtering, IDS, and IPS solutions.
What needs improvement?
Considering Azure, some customers may purchase Palo Alto Networks VM-300. Considering the pricing perspective, customers want multiple NIC types because they might have different spokes, and they may like to extend it with different interfaces on different spokes. Considering VM-Series on Azure Virtual Machines, since there is a limitation when it comes to Azure VM-300 as it supports only four cores, there may be some modifications made to support more cores.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series for three to four years. My company functions as a managed service provider and an integrator for Palo Alto Networks.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can be made more stable. I have seen some bugs in the solution. After deployment with an API call, you can use an HA solution in two scenarios, namely, as a load balancer and for API calls. I see that in the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, there are some delays when it comes to an API call configuration.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable tool. Considering the licensing part of the solution, it may not seem scalable, especially when you want to move from Palo Alto Networks VM-300 to Palo Alto Networks VM-500 since, for such a procedure, the virtual machines will have to be brought down and registered again with a different license, which is challenging.
My company's customers who use the solution are mostly enterprise-sized businesses.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support has been good. I rate the technical support a seven and a half to eight out of ten.
There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers. There are also some problems related to the understanding of our company's issues with the product by Palo Alto's support team.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
Users are provided with templates to go ahead with the deployment phase of Azure. There are already prepared templates available for installation, which users can use during installation.
Suppose our company's discussions with the customers are completed, and the design has been frozen. Considering the aforementioned case, the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series installation phase can be completed in a couple of hours, while the only time-consuming task is the creation of policies.
What other advice do I have?
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is easy to maintain.
From a security point of view, I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to be a better product compared to the other solutions in the market.
I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.
Great
Next Gen firewall, super easy to spin and use from CICD pipeline, no messing with licensing, vendor arch templates available and up to date.
Super Sonic nextgen FW
Best virtual firewall product solution
No. #1 Secured solution for VM's
Review of Palo Alto VM-Series: Pros and Cons for Secure Virtualized Environments
Resource-intensive: Running Palo Alto VM-Series requires significant CPU and memory resources, which may not be available on smaller virtualization hosts or cloud instances. This can result in performance issues and increased infrastructure costs.
Learning curve: As with any advanced security solution, there is a learning curve associated with deploying and managing Palo Alto VM-Series. Administrators will need to familiarize themselves with the product's user interface, policies, and configurations, which can take time and effort.
Vendor lock-in: Because Palo Alto VM-Series is a proprietary solution, organizations may be locked into using it for their virtualized firewall needs. This can limit their flexibility and ability to adopt other security solutions that may be a better fit for their needs.
Limited integrations: While Palo Alto VM-Series integrates well with other Palo Alto Networks products and a variety of third-party solutions, there may be some integrations that are not available or require custom development work
Application Visibility and Control: Another challenge in securing virtualized environments is gaining visibility and control over application traffic. Palo Alto VM-Series provides granular visibility and control over application traffic, enabling organizations to create policies that enforce application usage and protect against data exfiltration.
Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls
Cost saving and best in performance
One of the most professional security system
This vendor are used by the most professional IT industries.