SonicWall NSa Reviews

Mainly our customers use this solution as a general firewall. 

Currently, our most popular firewall is Fortinet FortiGate 40F. We do have all the way up to 100's, but most of our customers are small, medium-sized businesses.

We have a FortiAnalyzer that resides on Azure and we're getting a FortiManager because of the new capability to roll them out based on the serial number

With FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer, you have many more capabilities than you do with SonicWall.

I wouldn't say that. If it has no impact on them, it's doing its job correctly.

There are no specific features that you can say are better than anything else. It's very flexible and it meets our customer's needs.

The Fortinet Firewall is not the easiest firewall to maintain, nor is to set up and configure. Checkpoint and Sonos are much easier.

SonicWall, from my point of view is the same category as Fortinet. Checkpoint and Sonos are easier to use, but they don't have as many features as SonicWall.

You can do zero-trust networking with SonicWall, but it's not easy. Also, their desktop anti-virus sucks.

I have been using SonicWall since it was Netscreen — which was years ago.

When you buy it based on the load that you expect to use, there are no scalability issues, unless you swap them out.

SonicWall has exceptional tech support. I would rate checkpoint support best, SonicWall next, and Fortinet would be third. I would give SonicWall's tech support a rating of 7.5 to eight.

The structure of dealing with them is good. Once you get through to a support person, the support is very good. But getting through, getting to the point where you have someone on the line can be difficult. 

Overall, they're good at their job and they speak English.

The level of tech support varies: sometimes you get lucky and they're exceptional, and sometimes it's somebody that isn't that good.

If you don't set it up correctly, you are putting your customer's network at risk. They still haven't fixed a lot of the little issues that Dell introduced into the product line, but they're trying.

There are settings that if you don't set them correctly, you could potentially jeopardize your customer's network. 

SonicWall is probably easier to set up than Fortinet.

The pricing of SonicWall is still in line with Fortinet and Checkpoint. Personally, if I were presented with a decision between SonicWall, Checkpoint, or Fortinet, it would be a no-brainer.

If you're interested in SonicWall, consider checkpoint or Fortinet first.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

They don't have independent testing. They haven't been independently rated — or another way to put it: Gardner rates them poorly. Because of this, we can't sell SonicWall to customers as easily as we can sell Fortinet or Checkpoint.

I walked into a job where we had an end of life ns2400 that was a mess. Coming from a Meraki environment there was a learning curve on how to navigate the sometimes overly complicated user interface. Tasks I should have been able to complete in 10-15 minutes took longer and I bounced between menus to hash out NAT rules and port forwarding.

There is no Network Engineer on site, and there are too many piecemeal options to realize the full effect of the firewall's capabilities.

Support is usually good when it comes to helping out with issues. Once the matrix is learned, it becomes a much better tool, but the learning curve is pretty large.

Port forwarding could use streamlining. Otherwise, once you learn the user interface, the capabilities of the firewall are good.

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.

• Site-to-Site VPN
• Deep Packet Inspection
• Easy routing capabilities
• Stability
• AD integration
• Traffic shaping options
• VLAN options per interface
• APP based rules/filtering

With Site-to-Site VPN we can connect several branch office that we have and with the routing options we can setup a VPN backup route using different ISPs, this is great when the ISP stability is not good. The AD integration is not the best but it works, thru that option we enhance the security of the device in terms of manageability. Deep Packet Inspection helps us to block undesired traffic like p2p activity even in ssl encrypted tunnels, but this is far from being easy to setup. Traffic Shaping options give us the ability to limit interfaces like the "guest wifi interface" however you can setup this per interface, not per VLAN, you have to create a firewall rule then apply "Bandwidth management rule".

Sometimes, the GUI is extremely annoying and you need to implement external tools for better network monitoring.

The GUI needs to be worked on as sometimes it's annoying to configure because the options are separate. For configuring a simple port mapping you have to go to the address object menu, then the NAT menu, then theFirewall menu, and if you want to delete this rule, you have to go backwards.

The AD integration works but in some cases when the connectivity to the AD is lost, SonicWALL also lost the AD synchronization and we had to login using a local user to re-synchronize the appliance with the AD.

Last, but not less important, are the tools for monitoring the network. The appliance has a lot of monitoring tools, but they are not efficient. For example, you cannot see (in real time) what user is accessing what site, consuming bandwidth, etc. but you need external tool to do this. Dell need to take a look at their Kerio control software).

I have been using it for eight months.

None, the deployment was done in conjunction with a Dell partner. They had some difficulties, but all of them related to our specific scenario. In that time we use all the configurations per IP basis and not per zone basis like Dell recommends.

Some, but they were very strange. For example, one of our ISPs gave us an IP address through DHCP, and in two cases the interface won't take a new IP address, even if we reboot the appliance, we have to use another interface to solve this. For other cases, we use LenovoEMC Storage Connector.

That software floods the connections of SonicWALL reaching the 322000 simultaneous connections/sessions. Until we find this software, the SonicWALL becomes very slow almost unresponsive, also we start to losing connection to other networks that are being handled by the SonicWALL. We solved this by applying connection limits but the final solution was uninstalling that Lenovo software.

None, but if you need more you have to pay licenses and if it is no enough that you have to buy a mayor model of SonicWall.

We use our Dell Partner who are slow, but efficient.

Our Dell partner have great technicians and they know the product. However they were slow to solve some problems because the GUI didn´t allow a fluent workflow/management.

We didn't have a solution in place previously.

Because our scenario requirements were complex, the initial setup was somewhat complex.

We used a Dell partner who had a great level of expertise.

You have to look if this device will do the task that you need, and if it does with which license do it. If you haven't got a license, you almost cannot use this equipment. Here you have a license for all, from the device itself to the user VPN license, so you have to be careful with this. Also, the licenses are not perpetual so my advice is talk with a Dell partner, know the product, know the limitations and compare with other brands.

We didn't look at any other options.

SonicWALL offers two operating modes, per IP basis, and per zone basis. You should design your network for work on the per zone basis. It will be easier and effective to manage the device.

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. 

We use SonicWall as the primary firewall for the internet connectivity of a multi-site educational organization. It is a private multi-site wide area network for an educational institution with around six sites. There are currently about 3000 users in this client's organization.

It has excellent stability. 

The filter settings are confusing and overly complicated. The user interface can be improved. 

I have been using SonicWall NSA for a little bit over 10 years.

Stability is excellent. 

Scalability is marginal. SonicWall is currently tied to hardware, so the only way to scale is with new hardware. 

The initial setup was straightforward. 

I would recommend this solution, but I would suggest allocating time to become familiar with the interface.

I would rate SonicWall NSA a seven out of ten. I would like to see usability enhancement, specifically around the filters.