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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series pros and cons

Vendor: Palo Alto Networks
4.3 out of 5
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Pros & Cons summary

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series enhances visibility into network traffic, boosts security posture, and offers scalability and ease of deployment for small to medium businesses. With features like SSL decryption and Layer 7 inspection, it provides advanced threat prevention. Despite integration with Azure and AWS, challenges include difficult technical support access, initial setup complexity, VM performance limitations, and integration issues with third-party firewalls and web application firewalls.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series provides comprehensive visibility into network traffic and application usage, significantly improving security posture.
Stability and scalability are strengths of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes and capable of handling increased load efficiently.
Advanced threat prevention features, including WildFire and application-based prevention, offer protection against malware and ransomware, ensuring robust security.
Integration with cloud services allows Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to enhance cloud security posture and improve the agility of applying security policies.
Decentralized management with Panorama simplifies security operations, offering a single, unified view of the entire firewall infrastructure across cloud and on-premise environments.

CONS

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has limitations in scalability, making it challenging to scale up and deploy in cloud environments efficiently.
The integration of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series with other platforms like Azure and AWS is problematic, as it doesn't integrate well with third-party solutions.
Technical support for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is difficult to reach and often involves partner-enabled layers, causing delays in issue resolution.
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series needs improvement in its documentation and training materials to facilitate easier understanding and implementation.
Multi-factor authentication integration with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is inadequate, especially for VPN and CloudProtect services.
 

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pros review quotes

reviewer1267734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 21, 2020
The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily.
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AW
Apr 19, 2023
I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates.
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SS
Nov 9, 2021
With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly.
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Buyer's Guide
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
August 2025
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Learn what your peers think about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
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IC
Nov 17, 2022
The VM-Series reports how much bandwidth a particular IP is using. You don't need to regularly log into a website, like a Cisco command, to see what kind of ACL it's getting. There isn't an ACL use portal event. You can go there and see how much my ACL has been getting me.
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CA
Mar 22, 2018
It is reliable and the support is very good.
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JH
Jul 30, 2025
The most valuable feature is the CLI.
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it_user798924 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 21, 2018
We now know a lot more detail about what our users are doing on the network.
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SB
Feb 21, 2024
In terms of security breaches, the product aids in categorizing and monitoring traffic, allowing for the identification of potentially malicisous or incorrectly formatted applications.
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it_user1429398 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 13, 2020
What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time.
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Janardhan Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2022
Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.
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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Cons review quotes

reviewer1267734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 21, 2020
The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge.
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AW
Apr 19, 2023
Recently, they introduced their Prisma Cloud solution. Compared to the previous technologies, like Panorama, which is used for centralized firewall management, or even the individual firewalls, it's a bit challenging to integrate the traditional firewall policies into Prisma Cloud.
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SS
Nov 9, 2021
It would be helpful if we had a direct number for the support manager or the supporting engineer. That would be better than having to email every time because there would be less wait.
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Buyer's Guide
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
August 2025
Free Report: Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IC
Nov 17, 2022
There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution.
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CA
Mar 22, 2018
From time to time, they have released some content updates that have some issues, maybe twice a year.
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JH
Jul 30, 2025
The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster.
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it_user798924 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 21, 2018
The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved.
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SB
Feb 21, 2024
The current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing.
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it_user1429398 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 13, 2020
The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters.
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Janardhan Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2022
We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple.
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Show 10 more reviews (out of 61)

Product Categories

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Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

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Product Categories

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