Fortinet FortiManager Reviews

The primary use case is internal security domain protection in corporate sites.

The most valuable feature is intrusion protection.

Everybody is quite happy with the way that the graphical user interface works.

The redundancy and resiliency are quite good.

We have experienced a series of minor bugs that necessitated contacted technical support on several occasions.

I have been dealing with Fortinet FortiManager for about four years.

This is a resilient product. There are bugs in the system but the vendor has been very responsive in terms of fixing them or looking to them. None of the bugs were major, so we just had to use work-arounds until a new version came out that fixed them.

Scalability with FortiManager is fine.

The ability to upgrade, or downgrade if necessary, is very good.

We have made quite a lot of support calls to deal with bugs and other issues. The technical support is very responsive and there was no problem with it. I would say that they are excellent. My only problem is that we needed them perhaps slightly too often.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

Our deployment took about six months in total, although we were limited in resources and the requirements of operational handover. My engineering group has to stick to documentation and testing and requirements from the operations team. There were no issues with the deployment. Rather, that is how long it generally takes.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment and maintenance. We have about 10 engineers, although they support all of our networking products.

There are features that come at a cost that is in addition to the standard license.

In general, I have no serious concerns about this product so I have no problems recommending it. It has all of the features that I need, as far as I'm concerned. Certainly, there's nothing that would cause me to suggest that people not use it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is to analyze the internal traffic to see what's happening in the network. We can analyze the logs and push policies. In case something happens, after rebooting it, we can push the configuration back into the appliance. 

The most valuable feature is analyzing the traffic. When we call ISP and we do an upgrade, the performance is down and we can look into it and see where we're lacking and analyze the data and decide how to go about it - if it is from the firewall or the connection. 

We look at the traffic to segment the network and it improves and increases the performance. When we have a mobile connection and local laptops are on the same network. We have seen a big performance upgrade.  

Performance issues should be improved. We have problems when we have more mobile connections than local devices. Most of us have two to three devices. 

Finetuning and performance tuning need improvement.

I have been working with FortiManager for around fifteen years. 

The stability is very good. Throughout my career, my failure rates have been low. Some models have bugs on the flash drive. But it's usually from carelessness from the client's side. It's very stable.

If you go above your box, you have to update it. It's not so scalable. But most firewalls are like this. Throughput makes a difference. We have to upgrade boxes every three to four years. 

Their support is good. They respond well. Their response time is good and they can usually resolve the problem. 

The initial setup is not very complex. I've been in this field for a long so I don't find it very complex. 

The pricing is reasonable. It's not very expensive, it is reasonably priced. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like to see more performance-tuning. If they could work on that, that would be great. 

The primary use case of this solution is the management of firewalls.

The most valuable features are the centralized management of the firewalls. By unifying the deployment process of the policies among many of the firewalls, or virtual domains that you have, and it is very easy to install and use.

The user interface itself has areas that need improvement.

It would be very useful if they come up with a feature or a process that makes the transition of the interfaces between virtual domains easier. It's a difficult process to transfer one interface from one virtual domain to another.

I have been working with Fortinet FortiManager for a few years.

We are using the latest version.

It's a very good solution. It's a stable and reliable product.

It's a very scalable solution. It has been designed for a large environment. 

The concept of using a FortiManager is when you have a scalable modular infrastructure and several firewalls or Fortinet devices that you want to manage in a centralized environment.

We have three people using this solution and they are infrastructure engineers.

In our type of business, there is no plan or place for more expansion or improvement as we have a certain set of business services. The firewall is protecting our network and Fortinet devices are very limited in our company.

In our business, we cannot see a future for improving or expanding the use of FortiManager for some time.

The Fortinet technical support is very good. It's a good team.

Previously, we did not use a different solution.

The initial setup is easy and took less than an hour to deploy.

I did not use a vendor. I did it myself.

We are not yet at a point where we can see a return of investment. It's going to take some time for our new project, which is still in the deployment process, to start paying back the investment.

The licensing costs depend on how many devices you want to use. It's based on the licensing model and the number of devices you add to the system.

The more devices you add to FortiManager, the more you need to pay.

I am not aware of any additional costs.

We did not evaluate other options as we already had FortiGate devices. FortiManager was the only option.

You have to plan everything with very specific details before deploying the FortiManager, otherwise, it will be complex.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it on a virtual machine in our data center. We are not using a box.  

We have many types of clients so there are many types of use cases for our clients who we are deploying FortiGate for on-site to create the local network. Many sites are using FortiGate firewalls like 60E, 100E, 200E and 500E and some 3100D.  

We are using what we call zero-touch deployment. It is a very important technology or process that helps us to make the deployments efficiently. It is called zero-touch deployment or ZTD. It helps us to implement our configuration on these client sites by using FortiManager. Zero-touch deployment is the central piece here and it is made possible by the use of FortiManager. What happens is we prepare our configuration in the FortiManager. After that, the technicians who are doing the installation just need to connect the instance of FortiGate to the internet. They only have to do that and FortiGate automatically downloads the configuration from FortiManager. So this is the way we can optimize the implementation and reduce the duration of the setup time involved.  

It would normally take us a handful of days to install one FortiGate instance on one site. But with this technology, zero-touch deployment, we need just one hour or maybe as little as 30 minutes to install one site. It is much more efficient. We reduce the time further by installing the configuration in all the FortiGate instances that we are managing at the same time. For example, say we need to install a new policy to deny or to allow something to connect to the internet. We can create this configuration in the FortiManager and we can push it out to 100 or 200 FortiGate instances at the same time. So it helps us to reduce the time it takes to install and to perform maintenance as well as to minimize the errors. We are human so errors are more frequent than a deployment managed by a machine. With this process, if anything is wrong it is also easier to correct.  

The most valuable feature in FortiManager is the ability to automate the deployment processes and maintenance.  

Not just in FortiManager, but in any Fortinet project in general, the troubleshooting is very hard. If you compare it with other products from other vendors like Cisco or like Palo Alto, it is just more difficult. Say we are in a situation where we need to do some debugging. It is very hard to understand and to use the CMD and the CLI commands because there is not very much documentation. There is no description when you are using the CLI and there are no examples to follow. So it is hard to do some troubleshooting to find a problem. There is FortiAnalyzer that can help with this but it is not real-time. It is too hard to view real-time inbound and outbound traffic. Because we are network engineers and network administrators, we always need to have some time real-time traffic to view what is happening now, as it happens, to know what is really going on.  

I have been using Fortinet FortiManager for about two years.  

I would say that the product is not stable all the time. Sometimes, I need to reboot the virtual machine after we do some configuration. The configuration changes will only take place after a reboot. It is something that should not normally happen this way. We should not have to reboot it, but sometimes it happens that we are forced to.  

I think the product is very scalable. We can add a new instance of FortiGate with a simple click. We can configure it with high availability using two VMs active-backup. It is a very good product from the scalability point of view.  

There are now more than five people who are currently using FortiManager in our company and we are counting on more as we grow. We are a growing company of integrators. We have been on a mission for three years in our region to service our clients — all of them have more than 500 employees. We also have built up to more than 5000 employees total. These same five people using FortiManager are also what we need for the maintenance of the systems.  

The technical support is very good when I work with them. In reality, I give them seven or eight-out-of-ten. This is because sometimes you have a very good engineer; sometimes you do not get a very good engineer. This is the reason for the lower score. Last time we created a ticket, it took two months to resolve the problem. For the first month, I was working with someone who did not have a very good understanding and methods for resolving the problem. But, after that, I was allowed to work with another engineer who was very good. He was very good both technically and his methods.  

I work mostly with Fortinet now. I work with FortiGuard and FortiGate firewalls. I work with FortiExtender to connect with the 4G network. I work with FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager to manage the FortiGate firewalls. I use FortiManager with the network administrator on top to manage many firewalls at the same time. I can use FortiAnalyzer to analyze our network, to give us a lot of information about the stability of the network. And also to get reports like what are the top 10 hosts who are using the network.  

Before using FortiManager, generally, I worked with other vendors like Cisco, with FireSIGHT to manage the Firepower firewalls from Cisco installations. It was essentially the equivalent to FortiManager. It managed Firepower firewalls. I worked with around 700 Firepower firewalls and one other FireSIGHT appliance which was not VMware. But I found that Cisco was a little bit hard to manage. It is not very stable and we had some problems with it. We opened a ticket and I could see now that we did not get a good solution from the technical support. We just made a workaround which is not a good way to resolve issues. But in general, FortiManager is better than the FireSIGHT as a technology and as a solution.  

The initial setup is simple. It is not complex at all. We are using Fortinet FortiManager in our main data center and it publishes via virtual IT, or VIT, to our facility to connect to us from our spoke site. It is very simple, I think.  

Generally, what I know about the pricing is that Fortinet FortiManager is not expensive at all if you compare it with other vendors like Check Point and like Cisco. Fortinet products are the least expensive on the market in the category of firewalls.  

Really, it is not me who chose this solution. It was the staff before I come here. I do know the staff chose it as one of many potential options to be presented to the clients.  

I personally have a specialty using Fortinet but also SolarWinds — although not so much. But I am quite a bit more familiar in working with Cisco and Fortinet.

My advice to other people considering this solution is that they have to read about the product and they have to make an effort to pass the NSE 5 (Network Security Analyst) certification. It is for FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager products. Fortinet NSE 4 (Network Security Professional) certification talks about FortiGate and prepares your solution in a global sense. It is also very good to have. The main certification to have in my opinion is to pass the NSE 7 (Network Security Architect) certification because it talks about what I think is the negative part of Fortinet products, the troubleshooting. So my advice is that it is very important to pass the minimum of these three certifications to manage the solution with some level of expertise.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate FortiManager as an eight. Additional features I would like to see included in the next release of FortiManager to make it a nine or a ten is to be compatible with the management of other products like not just FortiGate. For example, it might work with FortiExtender.  

It is used to manage several firewalls, primarily for setting policies and as a central management point for all the firewalls.

The central management feature is the most valuable to me.

We find that several vulnerabilities are showing up every week, so we have to check every time with the customer to make sure everything is okay and to apply patches when needed. The frequency is a little disarming. So, the product is not very stable. 

I have been working with Fortinet FortiManager for a year. We are currently using the latest release, version 7.

I would rate the stability a four out of ten. 

There is not an issue with the technical team. It's more about the product itself.

The pricing model is affordable. Largely, customers opt for this solution because it has a low price. 

Overall, I would rate the product a five out of ten, mainly because of its stability and also because the technology is not as advanced as some of its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Check Point.

Our use case is for management and back up configuration. I work in the IT security division. 

This is a good product if you're looking for a central management solution. FortiManager provides good log management and more details than other solutions for logs.

I'd like to see the improvement of wizards when it comes to pushing policies and copying, VPNs, etc. Sometimes Fortinet changes its subscriptions. A few years ago Fortinet Firewall had capabilities for use in the cloud environment; they then changed the subscription and it was no longer part of the subscription, forcing the customer to buy an additional license. The technical support needs to improve. They moved their call center to India and although I have a special PIN code for the support team, they hang up after a minute or so and I need to redial. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable but it does require regular upgrades. 

We can scale but it requires the purchase of additional licenses.

We deploy this solution for our clients. It's a pretty straightforward process for us. 

The price is reasonable, especially when compared to Cisco or Palo Alto. It also has a free version for smaller organizations. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

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.