SonicWall NSa Reviews

We primarily use the solution from our firewall endpoint VPN. It does have a spam filter, SSL, DPI, and numerous other security features. We've got the full license suite.

The DPI-SSL is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's handy. It's nice.

The scalability is okay.

The initial implementation isn't too bad, once you get used to the process.

We're not happy with the device itself. We're obviously moving away from it for a reason that they're a Swiss pocket-knife of devices and they do a lot. However, nothing is really done well. They don't specialize in one thing that they excel at. They try instead to do almost everything and end up failing.

We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially.

Technical support is pretty slow to respond and escalate matters.

The cost of the solution is quite high.

The solution could use an invisible DPI-SSL or something that doesn't require a certificate rewrite. Most of the other vendors are doing that now. 

The SSL VPN performance-wise is terrible.

We've been using the solution for about three years at this point.

The stability isn't the best. It freezes. We have to reboot a lot. The device just doesn't work very well.

The scalability is okay, It's marginal, however, it is possible.

We have about 300 people on-premises that use the solution.

We've been in touch with technical support, ad currently, we find them to be below average in their support capabilities. Firewall support is just adequate. Right now, with COVID and everything, you are looking at 45 minutes to an hour to get the first technician on the phone. Often it takes two or three days to get it escalated. It's slow.

I personally previously used Cisco devices at another company, and therefore I have some experience with them. 

We're currently migrating away from this solution at the moment. We do not like the way the device performs.

In terms of deployment, there is a bit of a learning curve right off the top, as I come from a Cisco ASA background. It's more object-based, a little bit different. Once you get the knack of it, it's actually pretty nice in some ways.

That said, operationally, I would recommend anybody that deploys one of these to make sure they develop their own SOP for naming conventions, for objects, object groups, object types, service groups, service objects, et cetera, so that it's easier to manage and understand what you're doing. Generally speaking, it's just a best practices kind of process for administrative work. If you've got multiple admins, it's important that everything is contiguous, meaning everybody understands and works under that same parameters. It's like any other operating environment.

In terms of maintenance, there are two of us that generally manage it and maintain it on a fairly regular basis. I'm a network engineer and the department manager, who's not a system engineer, (however, is well-versed), also can perform maintenance as needed.

We handled the implementation in-house. We did not need an integrator or consultant to assist us.

While I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, I would estimate the licensing package was about $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

Your original purchase includes the purchase of the hardware, licensing, and support. It's not a cheap device. 

We are customers and end-users.

We are currently using the NSA 4600. It's a full security appliance. We're using the latest version of the solution.

It's our primary firewall/VPN endpoint. It's used 24/7, 365. Due to the nature of our work, uptime is critical.

Ultimately, if you were to ask me if I were to recommend this device, I would say no.

I'd rate the solution at a three out of ten, simple due to the fact that the stability isn't there, and it's an expensive solution.

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 are using SonicWall NSa as a network firewall and for segmentation on internal networks. We are using this firewall on the application level ID. We are using it for specific segmentation between production LANs and between technologies.

Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case.

The solution's price could be reduced. It is expensive.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for approximately four years.

SonicWall NSa is highly stable.

The scalability of SonicWall NSa is good. We have approximately 2,000 users using it.

I did not use the support from SonicWall NSa.

We have used other solutions such as pfSense and Linux native firewalls. I prefer SonicWall NSa but if you are going to use something for an enterprise you need another solution.

We have been using the solution for many years which has made the initial setup easy for us.

SonicWall NSa is worth the money we paid.

The price of SonicWall NSa is expensive.

The solution does not require a lot of maintenance. We have a specific team now for all technology, all for all infrastructure technologies.

I rate SonicWall NSa a seven out of ten.

We use the product for a lot of things, so it's hard to talk about an individual use case.

The solution seems to help with any intrusion.

I like all the features. The global filtering and the content filtering are great. It's not always intuitive, however, you can usually figure it out. It's really handling all of our firewall needs.

It's stable.

The solution can scale. 

The user interface could be better. 

I've been at the company for about two years and have used the solution since my arrival.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. As long as we maintain patching, we're good.

The solution has been scalable.

About 150 people are using it in our organization. 

I'm not sure if we have plans to increase usage at this time. 

We have been very satisfied with the technical support. 

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. this product was in place when I arrived at the company. 

The product was already set up when I got here, so I can't speak to the implementation process.

You only need one person to handle deployment and maintenance tasks. 

We've had it for quite a while and therefore must find it to be quite cost-effective. 

I'm not familiar with the licensing aspects of the solution. 

I'm a technical person. I don't care about the cost.

We have a very old SonicWall NSa. That's why we're looking to upgrade.

I'd advise new users to just learn how to work around the interface. That's my one complaint. It's sometimes a little cumbersome to use the UI.

I'd rate the solution eight 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.

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.

I am using SonicWall NSa as a firewall for many of its functionality, such as intrusion detection and traffic control.

The most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the control aspect of the solution.

The detection of malware can improve in SonicWall NSa.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for approximately seven years.

SonicWall NSa is stable.

The scalability of SonicWall NSa is good.

We have approximately 2000 employees and 6000 students using the solution. We have plans to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

The support is mostly online that we have received from SonicWall NSa.

I rate the support from SonicWall NSa a four out of five.

We did not use another firewall previously.

The initial setup of SonicWall NSa is straightforward. The full deployment took approximately two weeks.

We had an integrator do the implementation of SonicWall NSa for us.

I am the only one who maintains the solution.

SonicWall NSa is a straightforward firewall appliance, and most of the features are available.

I rate SonicWall NSa a nine out of ten.

SonicWall is for general security purposes.

SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there.

I also like the ability to manage all the firewalls from a single location. We can support all those things from this application. It's a cloud-based solution.

The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature. 

I've used SonicWall for about seven years.

SonicWall NSa is reliable.

It's cloud-based, so the scalability is good, and it's suitable for any size of customer.

SonicWall support is good. I rate it 10 out of 10.

Positive

SonicWall NSa is easy to understand. The initial setup for any firewall is straightforward. Having a single console is also good. The deployment time can vary depending on the client's requirements, like VPNs, routing, policies, load balancing, etc. At most, it will take one hour. I rate it 10 out of 10 for ease of setup. After deployment, SonicWall doesn't require specific maintenance. 

We are resellers, so the clients who purchase the firewall deploy it themselves. We provide support, too.

I rate SonicWall NSa nine out of 10.