SonicWall NSa Reviews

When it comes to securing VLANs, the primary use case for SonicWall NSa is VPNs. 

Compared to Cisco, SonicWall NSa is much easier to configure. Cisco tends to be cumbersome through the web interface. It's easy through the command line, but when you're troubleshooting something, you're usually not going through the command line. When you're digging through data trying to find if something happened, you're usually digging through the logs, through the web interface, because it should be much easier. In Cisco, the logs are odd and you have to be really particular on what you want. You have to look for specific details. 

This process is much easier SonicWall NSa. I want to know where the problem started and where it ended, that's it; and it's really clear in SonicWall NSa. Whereas in Cisco it's just not clear at all.

It would be amazing if all of the ports on the throughput devices were 10 gig or 100 gig. That would make it so much easier for me to designate 10 gigs throughout the whole network. Right now, with SonicWall NSa, I'm doing designations like "use 10 gigs through the whole network until you hit firewall." In that case, all of the traffic that has firewall enabled on it drops to one gig.

That causes issues with throughput, especially when you're talking about data stores and Ice Guzzy, or when you're splitting things out with VLANs. 

MAC address filtering on the VPN and on the firewall itself would be a good thing to add as well. If it's there, I don't know where it is.

Automation would also be good. 

The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier.

I've used SonicWall probably on and off for the last couple of years. It depends on which client I'm working with.

SonicWall NSa is stable. 

Just adding multiple sites is easy. Clustering them is pretty straightforward. But if I needed to expand them in series, that's a little bit more complicated.

I've never used SonicWall tech support. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

Hire a network guy or have a service that's going to monitor and manage SonicWall NSa for you.

It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. 

It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside.

It would be useful to have an application firewall that prevents the outside world from seeing your private IPs. You don't need to publicize your private IPs to the outside world, and you can create a barrier, like a proxy server.

I have been using this solution for four years. We are using SonicWall NSA 3600.

It is very stable.

The product that we have is not scalable. You'll have to buy a firewall model that suits your requirement with a certain amount of growth built into it. They have other products that are scalable, and they are the 9600 series ones.

Currently, we have about 300 users. We plan to keep using this solution.

I have contacted their technical support, and I have received good support.

Its initial setup is absolutely straightforward. It took less than an hour. There were no issues.

I did it myself. Currently, we are maintaining it ourselves. We are not getting it done from anyone outside, but we have the subscription for SonicWall so that the security areas are taken care of by them.

Normally, when we buy any product, we buy it with a five-year service built into it. Later on, depending on the growth of the organization, we go for a new one or an upgrade.

We've been using SonicWall since 2006. When we decided on SonicWall, I had tried another product for 15 days, but it was not serving the requirements that we had. Therefore, we decided on SonicWall.

I would very much recommend this solution to others. I would rate SonicWall NSA an eight out of ten.

We are using SonicWall NSA 2600 for firewall purposes. We have its latest version.

It is able to fulfill my requirements. It protects our network environment. It has control over IPS, signatures, and it can also manage bandwidth and mapping. It is also stable and has good support.

It doesn't require much improvement. The only improvement area is that cloud reporting, assessment reporting, and other reporting features should be available with the subscription. They should provide reporting features with the subscription base, which is currently not there. We bought the reporting tool, but there are some complications. They have made some changes to the application, and now the reporting management is completely on the cloud. 

I have been using this solution for four years.

It has been stable. There are no issues with its stability.

It is not scalable. We can upgrade to a new box depending on the subscription. We have a three-year subscription, so we will continue with it for three years. After that, we would look for an alternative tool based on our requirements. Currently, we have approximately 250 plus users.

We have a license for support. We can raise a ticket if we need any assistance from their support. They are good, and I am satisfied with their support. They always take care of customer satisfaction. There might be a delay or something, but at the end of the day, they resolve the issues.

I have used other solutions. Palo Alto and Sophos are good solutions. FortiGate is also good, and it allows you to see and manage everything from one control. Some of the features available in other solutions might not be available in SonicWall NSA, but it is fulfilling my requirements.

We don't really need any support with the installation. There are a lot of knowledge documents. We also have a license for support, and if required, we can get support.

We have only two people who have been managing it for the last three years or so. We didn't face any challenges.

Its price is okay.

I would recommend this solution to others. I am satisfied with this solution.

I would rate SonicWall NSA an eight out of ten. 

We use this firewall to protect our perimeter. We create NAT policies and have a DMZ set up.

It is also used to filter the internet for all of our users.

The most valuable feature is the sandbox.

The content filter needs to be improved. I would also like to see better application filtering.

When we are troubleshooting problems, we find that the logs we see are not sufficient. It makes it difficult to find out what the main issue is. It means that we have to search further or perform another test to see what happened.

Technical support is in need of improvement.

We have been using SonicWall for approximately 15 years, and more specifically, SonicWall NSA for the past 10.

The stability is fine and we don't have any issues. We have never needed to report a problem.

We have about 20 people in the company who are protected by this product, and I think that the scalability is fine. However, I would say that it is best for small to medium-sized organizations.

When we have gone to the vendor for support, I don't think that the quality was very good. I would rate the vendor support a six out of ten.

I used to work with Check Point, and they are very good when it comes to application filtering.

The initial setup is easy and the deployment can be completed in between two and four hours. This includes installation and adjustments that need to be made.

We have an in-house SonicWall specialist.

When implemented properly, the total cost of operation is very low.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing SonicWall NSA is that they have to be very clear about what it is that they're looking for. It is a good solution for small and medium-sized businesses, and when you are very clear about what you need, you can implement a lot of other security services with a total cost of operation that is very low.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for just securing our users and creating a LAN through VPN tunnels. We use it to provide remote access to a cloud service.

It has allowed us to work remotely when the order to shelter in place went into effect in March of this year due to COVID-19.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is its ability to work like any other firewall.

The product is pretty easy to configure. It's easy to maintain and it works well with Windows.

There are features that offer 3G, 4G, failover, wireless, and things like that are very good. I'm not a firewall expert, however, in my opinion, the solution pretty much covers the needs of small and medium businesses.

Currently, I just have the basic modules turned on. I'd love to see how it works in terms of preventing more malware from getting through.

We still get phishing emails that manage to come through from time to time.

The solution could use a bit more security.

We had issues with the VPN tunnel between two sites. It wouldn't stay up. That was a problem for us. They need to fix it if they find it happens across the board to other customers.

This company has been using the solution for good three years.

The solution is stable. I've had one running for a little over 300 days without any problem. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is pretty good. I can scale out and add a firewall within a new office if I need to. If an organization wants to scale, they should be able to do so with no problems. Everyone working in our office uses the solution. Anybody that has a work laptop that needs to remote work from outside the office can do so as well. It's 100% used across the board.

I had to call support when one of my VPNs was failing. The VPN tunnel between two sites wouldn't stay up and they had us use a different security protocol.

They were very helpful. I found them to be quite responsive and knowledgeable. I don't think the problem with the VPN should have been there in the first place, however, that said, they did help us. I'd rate them, overall, at a nine out of ten.

The initial setup isn't too complex. My understanding is that it's straightforward. I didn't set it up myself, however, it's got configuration wizards to walk a user through. This no doubt is quite helpful and makes it pretty simple in terms of implementation.

The pricing is pretty reasonable. We don't find it to be overly expensive.

The version we are using is NSA 20 or 60.

If a company is looking for a good product that's easy to configure, I would suggest they consider SonicWall.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. If we didn't have that trouble with the VPN tunnel, I would give it a perfect score.

The solution is primarily used as a perimeter firewall for a gateway toward public internet traffic. Basically, it is a gateway between our internal network and public traffic.

Feature wise, the content filtering is good.

The basic firewall rules of the solution are great.

The product has a lot of bugs, actually. We are facing some issues with this product. The DPI SSL feature which is there, it is not working properly.

The IRL, when it was installed, had us facing some issues. However, as they kept on uploading the images, the issues are starting to get fixed. 

They already have this feature of advanced capture, set rotation, and so it is a next-generation firewall only. They could improve on their software side. Their software, which is managing the hardware, it's not up to the mark.

We've been using our current particular model (NSA 5600, the most current model) for the last two years. The other firewall we were using, SonicWall 5500 we've used for the last seven or eight years. 

It took some time for us to establish stability within the solution at the beginning. At this point, we find it to be quite stable except for the DPI SSL feature.

We had already scaled from the older version, the 5500, however, the 5600, is quite a new product. They have since changed the OS, so it ended up being a bit complex from the earlier version. The complexity is there, obviously. It's not that easy to manage. You really need to have someone with knowledge right there with you.

It is an internal firewall. All of our traffic, internal traffic, goes through this firewall only. There are somewhere around, at any point in time, 600, 700 users. We have total sync of 2,000 users, 2,000 plus. But at any point in time, 600 users are there, connected. It runs continuously, on a daily basis.

We've never contacted technical support in the past. We go through our vendor. We don't call SonicWall. 

While there are a lot of options on the market, we only use SonicWall at this time. We have used Sophos in the past previously. We found that Sophos Firewall had more flexibility compared to SonicWall, especially in the configuration capabilities.

he initial setup was actually it was done by our vendor partner. And it was not difficult for them. However, during the initial set up, we faced some issues. It was not easy until there were image upgrades, and now those issues are fixed. 

We've also outsourced the maintenance part of the solution's upkeep to our vendor. We only do the followup and we level call. Basic manageability, they do the operation, we manage at our end. Basic operations. But for other calls, we level call with the vendor.

We hired our vendor partner to do the initial implementation for us. We didn't handle it in-house.

I'm not sure what the pricing of the product is. It falls within a middle range in terms of pricing. It' not the cheapest or more expensive. 

The SSL VPN feature, which is what we needed to purchase, is a separate license.

There's a lot of firewalls available, including Cisco, FortiGate, and Juniper firewalls too. There are many alternatives.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with SonicWall.

I wouldn't recommend the solution, actually. It's hard to set up and the stability takes a while to establish. They need to do better on their software side, and other solutions, like Sophos, have more flexibility in their configuration capabilities.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is at the perimeter of all of our customer's sites with all of the security services turned on. That is anti-malware, anti-spyware, geo IP filtering is an important thing for us, web filtering and the Capture ATP. We are looking at preventing downloading of any virus-infected files.

Geo-IP filtering has made a large impact on us and it is very important to us.

The most valuable features to us are the security services which is a critical factor in our deployment. Today we need to have all the security services enabled because firewalls are not enough.

When it comes to security I think all of the features are currently open to improvement.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for the past ten to fifteen years.

Technical support used to be very good and now we are dealing with long response times.  On a scale of one to ten today we are looking at a four or five instead of a nine or ten.

The setup is straightforward however you want to have a good technical support individual involved for proper deployment.

I would rate SonicWall NSa a nine out of ten as an overall solution in security.

SonicWall NSa's most valuable features are the ease of configuration and the GUI. It's a web-based application, so we can easily configure all we want in the browser.

An area for improvement would be SonicWall NSa's integration with antiviruses. In the next release, SonicWall should include a wireless solution so we can implement the firewall in our networks and for wireless users and access points.

I've been using SonicWall NSa for about two years.

SonicWall NSa is a stable system that's really easy to handle and communicate with.

SonicWall's technical support is very responsive and helpful whenever we need support from them.

Positive

Previously, I worked with PMG Firewall, but SonicWall has a higher level of compatibility, and the integration between the software and hardware gives us more speed in traffic and processing the data over the firewall.

The initial setup was easy - we could implement rules for mapping, network traffic, and network address translation easily on our firewall. I would rate the ease of the setup as four out of five.

SonicWall NSa is a great choice for any growing company - it's really helpful, and it's suitable for networks with limited or unlimited users. I would rate SonicWall NSa as eight out of ten.