Fortinet FortiGate-VM Reviews

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a firewall for our internet.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good.

I have been Fortinet FortiGate-VM for approximately three years.

The stability is good.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is scalable.

We have 110 systems for users that we can connect and we have 12 users using the VPN.

The technical support in my experience has been good.

We require ten people for the deployment of Fortinet FortiGate-VM.

We have been waiting a long time for the vendor to give us licenses, it has been five months and we are still waiting. However, the price is reasonable.

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a public cloud for Microsoft Azure. 

My experience with the solution has been very positive and Fortinet provides a great layer of security when it comes to SD-WAN and other security capabilities. There are many models available to suit a host of environments. 

The solution is extremely easy and friendly. The configuration, graphical interface and command line are easy to use.

The price is problematic. 

An interesting feature of the vendor license involves SD-WAN orchestrator and this should be addressed in the part which deals with feature licensing. 

I have been working with FortiGate products for the past five years and with Fortinet FortiGate-VM for the past year. 

The technical support varies with the product in question. The support for FortiGate appliances is relatively good compared with the more complicated support afforded other products. 

I like the comparative use of the SD-WAN feature of the solution. 

The solution could be better priced. 

My sole experience with the solution is in the Azure environments. 

As a Fortinet partner, I make use of many of its products. 

As I feel Fortinet FortiGate-VM to be a good solution, I rate it as a ten out of ten. 

We use Fortinet FortiGate-VM as an SD-WAN solution and for security profiles.

I do not recall which version we are using. 

The most valuable feature is the WAN optimization. 

We have encountered certain issues with the bandwidth in respect of the security layer. 

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate-VM for two years. 

The solution has good stability. 

For the moment, we don't have plans to increase the usage. 

The initial setup was simple.

The setup period can vary. I believe it did not take us more than a week. 

There are ten people in our organization who are responsible for the deployment. 

Our licensing costs are of a general nature. There are no additional costs beyond the standard fee. 

There are around 100 users making use of the solution in our organization. 

The solution is quite good. It is simple and fast. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a nine out of ten. 

I like how Fortinet products work together to provide a total equipment solution. And, I don't see any issues with that solution. In terms of specific features, I like FortiGate's load balancing, interface, and priority on the network.

Fortinet could improve the availability and delivery of its products. It takes four to six weeks for every purchase to arrive.

I've been using FortiGate-VM for six years.

Fortinet's local support in Mexico could be better.

I rate FortiGate 10 out of 10. 

We're using FortiGate-VM on-prem for our firewalls. The Fortinet component in the cloud is FortiGuard. We get our virus definitions regularly updated from the cloud, but the FortiGate firewalls are all on-prem. While the virtual firewalls are created inside the physical firewall, there is an option for a virtual machine firewall where we'll give you the VHD file, and you can install it to a server.

Virtual machines aren't widely used in Brunei because the Brunei government isn't ready for these things yet. They're more confident in hardware, but everything is slowly starting to head in this direction. Others are watching what will happen when people use the apps before they try them.

Some customers prefer VM, especially those customers already leveraging the virtual machine environment. Typically, they don't want to spend on the hardware because they already have all these VMs, so they choose the VM option. But in most deployments, they still prefer the hardware for their firewall because it's already hard-coded.

To improve FortiGate-VM, Fortinet needs to harden it more. For example, if you are using Hyper-V, then you need guidelines for hardening FortiGate-VM that are specific to the Hyper-V environment. If it's VMware, there should be at least a guideline on how to harden the firewall.

We've been working with FortiGate-VM since 2010.

Fortinet-VM is more scalable than the hardware version. If you're using an appliance, there are limitations in terms of hardware specs. So if you want a more scalable firewall, you can get a VM and install it on a high-end server. From there, you have more leverage on how many virtual firewalls you want to create based on that VM. In other words, it's already fixed hardware in the appliance — it's already hard-coded in the appliance. So if you are using a VM and installing it on a high-specs server, then your machine has much higher performance in packaging all these policies and all these hardware security features. 

We proved the frontline support for our client organizations or customers. So far we are satisfied with Fortinet support. We have currently have Fortinet-certified engineers in our company, so we don't have to contact support unless it's a complex issue. We have an NSE7-certified engineer, so we are quite confident with our deployment now.

FortiGate-VM setup is pretty straightforward. It depends on the implementation size, but it takes a week for an organization of around 100 users. Normally Fortinet helps their customers with deployment and post-deployment adjustments, so you don't have any problems. If anything goes wrong, Fortinet is there to support you. 

Like most similar products in the market, Fortinet's enterprise customers need to pay for annual support. They call it FortiCare, and it's direct support from Fortinet. FortiCare is renewed annually and covers support for new releases, purchases, and updates. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM eight out of 10. However, based on experience, we usually don't recommend using VM firewalls. We still prefer using a hardware-based firewall when that's appropriate. It depends on your needs and the size of your user base. With FortiGate-VM, you can control the size of your firewall if you're using VMs. But on the other hand, if you are using Microsoft Hyper-V, you need to address all these vulnerabilities of Microsoft. And if you're using VMware, then you need to deal with VMware's vulnerabilities. The hardware version of FortiGate has already been hardened based on FortiGate standards. That's the main difference between the FortiGate appliance and FortiGate-VM.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM may be installed on Azure or AWS.

You can either install it in your data center alongside your virtual applications or put it in the public cloud to secure it.

It is very versatile.

More monitoring should be included with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, in my opinion.

It has a monitoring tool, but it could be improved.

We have been selling Fortinet FortiGate VM for at least 12 years. It could be 15 years because it has been exclusive since the beginning.

It's available both on-premises and in the cloud.

It's a stable product.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very scalable because you can use Fortinet FortiManager.

We have a big team of many people.

Technical support is good.

With Fortinet FortiGate-VM you can bring your own licensing, or it can be paid on a yearly basis.

Pricing is very flexible.

Definitely, I would recommend this solution to others.

FortiGate Cloud and FortiGate-VM are the same product.

FortiOS is the operating system on FortiGate.

Fortinet has a very large product portfolio. You have the VM, and you have physical appliances for Firewalls.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for creating IPsec tunnels and web and application filters. We use it for monitoring virtual traffic on platforms including VMware solutions. 

I only know a little bit about the solution's firmware.

This said, the solution is stable and user-friendly. 

The solution should provide more useful GUI features. This would prevent us from having to resort to CLI or certain basic commands. 

There should be an IPsec failover. 

We have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for around four years.

The solution is stable. 

The technical support is very good. It does not need to be improved. 

The installation is very easy and user-friendly. 

We have two teams, involving PLM managers, whose sole job is to support the customers. 

We pay for a yearly license. 

We deployed the solution in a vCenter, using VMware. We do so solely on cloud. 

We have around 10 clients who are making use of on-premises deployment. 

We usually recommend SonicWall and Sophos in place of the solution since, with this IPsec solution, if one configures to an HPE with the IPsec failover, it fails to work. 

I rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM as a seven out of ten. 

FortiGate is an Exhibition Firewall that comes with the Antivirus, IPS, and Web Applications

The most valuable features are the IPS and Antivirus.

The firewall functionalities are fine.

It has a lot of features.

It needs an Application Inspection. The threat landscape is very high. Anyone can exploit the flow-based policies. It is always better to have intern-based policies.

I have been using Fortinet FortiGate-VM for more than two years.

We are using the latest version.

Fortinet FortiGate-VM is a reliable product.

It is easy to scale this solution, but there are some challenges with Azure and high availability.

My experience with technical support was good.

We are also using Palo Alto.

The initial setup was simple.

We don't require a lot of maintenance. Most of the maintenance is carried out by Microsoft.

It is a custom operating system that is available on FortiGate Firewall, and Palo Alto Firewall.

Microsoft doesn't do anything in terms of upgrades of the patches. They only do basic maintenance at the host level and the VM level.

We only have one person managing the device.

We were able to complete the installation on our own.

Pricing is somewhere in the middle. It's a mid-ranged product.

There are additional fees with this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. It is a stable firmware, with many releases. It has a lot of features. Apart from the firewall, it comes with antivirus, IPS, and Web Application Firewall.

It has a lot of integration with external connectors, such as Teams, that are protected from threats that come from external sources.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM an eight out of ten.

The use case for VMs is if you're going to deploy them like a SaaS edge, to protect your applications or provide deeper visibility into the traffic. Or you could use it in your data centers as well. However, that's not our preference.

We primarily use the solution for network segmentation at our data centers and remote connectivity to our distributed sites.

We were able to take advantage of their management tool, FortiManager, to get a single pane of glass. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer do not have a single panel glass. Rather, they are two panes of glasses to manage and monitor the firewalls where previously we were using Cisco. I don't want to call them legacy firewalls, however, with Cisco firewalls, we didn't have that management or logging visibility.

The product has pretty good logging and reporting capabilities native to the firewall. Then they also use FortiAnalyzer to aggregate that traffic and provide more detailed and aggregated reporting. That's going to help when you're analyzing network traffic for network segmentation initiatives.

The stability is excellent.

It's very easy to set up, even for more junior developers.

The scalability has improved. 

It's got a clean interface and it's very intuitive. Everything is easy to navigate.

Their offering for MFA isn't the cleanest. They have a product called FortiAuthenticator. It's not a FortiGate but that is one of their MFA offerings. However, other products that I've used, like Duo, are better from a user experience standpoint. They are easier to configure. 

I've been using the solution for ten years. It's been a while. 

Six or seven years ago, they had issues with code versions where they would make changes within the code version and they would have some bugs. That said, over the last six or so years, their releases have been very stable. We've had very few issues with any type of bugs or issues.

Scalability has gotten better with their SD-WAN offering. They're able to utilize inexpensive lines such as 4G, 5G, or DSL. It has allowed us to move away from expensive MPLS lines.

Historically, conventional or Next-Gen firewalls have been utilized at data centers and remote sites. Now, however, a lot of customers are moving towards Zero-Trust access and SASE. I'm currently looking to get a little bit more information on Zero-Trust architecture, as it reduces the overall management and need for physical firewalls in all your locations, which can get expensive.

We also use the Cisco ASA firewalls. I do find that Fortinet is easier to handle than Cisco as you don't need to handle tasks via the command line, which makes it easier especially for junior-level developers.

The initial setup is very straightforward. I started out in the Cisco world with Cisco firewalls and switches. Then we started deploying FortiGate and I found that FortiGate was easier to learn, especially for junior-level engineers. We were able to get junior-level engineers up to speed quicker than if it was a Cisco platform, especially if they haven't used the command line before.

Deployment usually takes a day, depending on the complexity of the firewall. It might be a day to two, depends on if we are using multiple IPSec tunnels if it's at a data center or a remote site. 

In terms of deployment and maintenance, in my experience, by a rough order of magnitude, a company would need one technician per 30 firewalls. For our company, we had a team of three network engineers and we had a fleet of about 120 firewalls.

I handed the implementation myself with my team. We didn't need any integrators or consultants.

For our entire fleet of 120 firewalls, we're paying about $100,000 per year. The licensing fees give you support and the capability to download updated definitions of threat intelligence from Fortinet.

I was previously a customer. now I am a reseller and Fortinet partner.

We primarily use hardware-based appliances, including the 100 D/E series, 100F, 190 D/E's, ADCs, 600 E's. They are similar to VMs.

We're using the most recent code level at this time. We're one version behind the latest version. We tend to use one version behind the most recent for safety reasons so that we can avoid troublesome bugs or glitches.

Anyone looking to deploy Next-Gen firewalls, in general, should really define their use cases to be able to decide on the proper technology to deploy within the environment. If you're looking to deploy Next-Gen firewalls at all your locations and create point-to-point VPN tunnels, they can get cumbersome and difficult to manage policies. It is also difficult to do network segmentation. With some of the Zero-Trust offerings, you're able to actually move your clients outside of your corporate perimeter, and then isolate those applications based on the user per application, instead of requiring them to dial back via traditional VPN to your data centers, which sometimes isn't the best user experience for your end-users.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I work for a telecommunication company. We are a service provider, and we use it for our internal network and for providing services to our customers.

The firewalling feature is used the most, but we also have a particular use case for the SD-WAN service. 

Its interface is good. It comes with a lot of features, and its performance is also very good. 

It is a very good product, and it is good at standing by itself. It can maybe have a little bit of integration with other products, but it is not that important for most use cases.

I am quite new to this product.

Its stability is very good.

For the SD-WAN use case that I am researching, it seems more suitable for medium-sized customers. It is a little bit difficult to use for a big customer.

Their technical support is good.

I would rate Fortinet FortiGate-VM a 10 out of 10. It tops others in terms of performance.