Fortinet VM firewall vs Stormshield / WatchGuard
Posted by Top_golfer28@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Looking for real-world feedback: we’re evaluating Fortinet (VM-based, hosted) against Stormshield and WatchGuard (also virtual appliances).
In a fully hosted environment (no physical gear), what are the real advantages of Fortinet?
Appreciate any insights or lessons learned!
Jeff-J777@reddit
I have used both. My prior place we were all WatchGuard, at the MSP I worked for we were a Fortinet shop. Everything was on-prem. But I also used a Fortigate in Azure when doing some Azure testing at my current job. Then at my current job we just replaced our Fortigate with Palo Alto. I don't like Palo Alto.
From a programming standpoint I liked Fortigate better than WatchGuard, but WatchGuard was not bad I would take WatchGuard over Palo Alto any day. Support for both were good. Fortigate to me just seems to have a much more polished interface. I been using FortiGate since the B series and watching them advance has been fun. The other nice thing is from the low level models to mode advancved models the web interface is the same apart from the physical interfaces of the device. WatchGuard I think different models have different interface.
If I could I would go Fortigate, it is just a good all around firewall. Then I would say documentation wise Fortigate has the best online. They have videos called FortiCookBooks that showed you how to configure things. WatchGuard was not bad as well.
My one bad thing about Fortigate is they started putting some features of FortiClient behind a pay wall and I did not like that.
Lofoten_@reddit
You didn't really expound on your needs or use case... so it's a bit hard to answer the question.
All I can say is that I fully stand by Fortinet's products (we're mostly on prem -- healthcare,) and their support. If I can't find something int he documentation, I can open a ticket or call, and I will have an estimate, whether it be 30 minutes or 4 hours, and an engineer will call me back and walk me through whatever I couldn't figure out.
Yes, you will deal with an accent barrier, but they have great engineers from my experience. I've actually learned a little bit of Hindi.
You're going to have to pay for the support, but I justify that to C-levels by the downtime that would have happened and the cost of business continuity (don't you love using synergy slang terms to them?)
Plus, you can manage devices via Intune, it's an easy process.
I know that probably doesn't help, but as a happy, satisfied sysadmin customer, that's my 2 cents.
ITnerdsunited@reddit
We're a Watchguard shop and pretty happy with the product. They're finally starting on wiregaurd implementation. No experience with stormshield or fortinet that's worth anything.