Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Valuable Features

Kim Ejby Lorentzen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Principal Solutions Architect, HPE Aruba Networking - Full Stack Platform Expert at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The most valuable feature of the solution is the zero-trust security architecture.

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AW
Sr. Networking Engineer at Emerson

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.

They have a centralized Palo Alto Customer Support Portal and if we require any licenses, such as a next-generation firewall license, we can easily download and integrate them with this solution. We can also schedule periodic updates. That is quite user-friendly.

In terms of functionality, we are using IPSec tunneling and Palo Alto's WildFire feature. We use the security policies, Panorama, and Prisma Cloud as well.

We use Panorama to manage our security policy model across on-prem and public cloud environments. It plays a key role with respect to centralized management, for physical enterprise firewalls and cloud-based firewalls. It gives you centralized control over all the infrastructure. Unified policies can be pushed from that centralized place with templates.

When you deploy VM-Series Firewalls, they are quite flexible. You just have to select the instances, storage, security policies, and firewall rules. Within minutes, you can deploy the firewalls.

We are also able to adjust firewall sizing on the fly, which is important. Initially, we decided on a firewall based on the throughput assumptions. But in peak hours or during a peak month for traffic, we need to scale the firewalls. That should be automatically done. AWS and Azure provide very good features and, by using them, within a second it automatically scales, based on the incoming traffic.

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Imrankhan Pathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Specialist at YASH Technologies

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series' security features are all good.

Centralized management is valuable because it allows us to configure settings in one location and apply them across all three locations.

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Buyer's Guide
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Charles Salameh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Engineer at Netcetera AG

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic. You can also perform log debugging. It provides all the things that Azure's firewall doesn't offer. Plus, you have full ownership of your device.

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RM
Security Consultant at Airpel

The product is easy to use and deploy, and it enhances the overall security posture while deploying the application in the cloud. The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile. You can use the solution to easily protect your data from cyber criminals, including insider or outside-based attacks.

The solution is easy to deploy, easy to manage, and easy to create policies. An organization's overall security posture can be improved by deploying Palo Alto Networks VM-Series firewall.

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SB
Network Architect at Correla Ltd.

We've integrated all necessary functions into a single box shop currently. This setup is convenient for those who aren't yet in the cloud and prefer to stick with familiar tools. However, there's now a plethora of cloud-based tools that offer similar functionalities, leading to potential duplication and increased costs. 

In terms of security breaches, the product aids in categorizing and monitoring traffic, allowing for the identification of potentially malicisous or incorrectly formatted applications. While there are often false positives, the product has successfully detected unauthorized traffic streams.

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JH
Director of IT at Tavoca Inc

The most valuable feature is the CLI.

We have the firewall configured for zero-day signatures, which is very important to us. We must be HIPAA and PCI compliant, which means that we need those signatures immediately.

There is no noticeable trade-off between security and network performance. In fact, so far, we've not seen any negative network performance with it. We're very impressed in that regard.

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Aqeel Junaid - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Executive - Information Security at sunshine holdings

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that its UI is good since it offers options. In terms of being compliant with the firewall security standards, the product falls in the first or second place. The product can also be considered as NGFW. In general, the product is user-friendly.

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Deja Srivatjanapong - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Network Engineer at Soiel

The tool provides ease of use for GUI management and deployment. The product provides more visibility into our traffic. It also helps with troubleshooting a bit of high-level next-generation platforms. The auto-update feature of App-ID is valuable. Traffic monitoring, threat monitoring, and dashboards are the most impactful for our network security.

Having visibility and alerts and being able to react to them is valuable. The integration of VM-Series with cloud services has helped us a lot to streamline our security operations. The solution has ease of use. The web interface and the traffic monitoring are more centralized.

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Mitul Rajput - PeerSpot reviewer
GM COE at Anuntatech Management Services Ltd

IDS, IPS, web filtering, and URL filtering are valuable features. Palo Alto is a good product. We have become a major reseller of the product. The tool is beneficial to us. The solution strengthens our IT posture.

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BK
Manager, Information Technology at SWPA Corp

The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment.

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Ahmed_Shalaby - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cyber Security Engineer at Beta Information Technology

The most valuable features of the solution are its stability, ease of implementation, ease of operation, and security.

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Hendrik-Du Plooy - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager at Saber1

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series's most valuable feature is the visibility of the environment.

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Ricardo S. - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Its security features, i.e. antimalware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA feature is also very useful to provide access to servers and some users in the company. 

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Nasir Akbar - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Engineer at SAUDI PARAMOUNT COMPUTER SYSTEMS

The solution enables organizations to enforce policies. We can control every endpoint that is connected to the network.

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IC
Lead Security at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature is the proxy write. It's called the Write Fill process. It's in a bundle of everything. Palo Alto has everything, including CAD management, malware protection, and a file management system. There is a bundle of packages. This is not in the latest edition of Azure Firewall.

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.

It automatically tells what rules are in place, like scheduled and additional rules. You don't need to create new rules every time. It will automatically tell you that this rule exists. 

Palo Alto's next-generation firewall is classless, and it's a bundle of everything, including malware management, bandwidth utilization, and how much each IP is costing you. It offers bandwidth utilization, DDoS protection, a next-generation firewall, and everything I need in one bundle.

You can integrate fully automated virtual firewall deployments and provisioning into existing DevOps workflows if you are a good developer. Palo Alto offers help for it, but you should have developer knowledge.

It's easy to migrate workloads to the cloud. They expose the API also. In two days, I can implement two firewalls in different regions. It's flexible. That is a feature of Azure and Palo Alto. This kind of integration is why I am able to do the migration in two days.

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JR
Manager, Information Technology at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We are using the complete box. We are mostly using the security services and firewall rules in Panorama.

We need to look at different variables and granular policies of various tools. This makes it easy to understand.

We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as showing us what attacks are coming in.

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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TM
Network Engineer at Peristent Systems

The product's most valuable feature is pricing.

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NK
Senior Manager Network Engineering at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming out, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks.

It has an advanced engine that does parallel processing for packet and deep packet inspection. It also supports user authentication.

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Nick Rama - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Nexus Technologies,Inc.

The main advantage of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series stems from the fact that you can access it with the help of cloud services.

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PK
Cloud Practice Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
  • Firewalls
  • VPN
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SS
C.T.O at Sastra Network Solution Inc. Pvt. Ltd.

This is a firewall product and every OEM has claims about their special features. This device is very user-friendly and offers ease of monitoring.

Changes to the configuration happen quickly.

There is a single pane of glass for reporting, which is quite good. 

The interface is user-friendly.

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DR
Director of Infrastructure at Arcadia.io
  • It is the leader in the marketplace.
  • It has the ability to create Palo Alto VM-series using software.
  • The VM-Series has all of the components (out-of-the-box) that you need in a very secure environment.
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OA
Architect Network Security at GTT

 The VM-Series scalability is fast and easy to implement, improving our security posture as our Azure network grows. The only minor issue we've faced is with the apps ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering. Tools like Loopback help us identify open or denied flows between two firewalls and manage the servers effectively. The Palo Alto system easily identifies rules and objects within roles, making maintenance straightforward.

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JL
Executive Cyber Security Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily. For instance, we once went from one cloud provider to another. The nice thing about that situation was that I could just move the VMs almost with a click of a button. It was really convenient and easy and an option that every firewall will not give you.  

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MR
Infrastructure Team Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

In AWS, Palo Alto provides us a better view than flow logs for network traffic.

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SS
Director of Cloud Security at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The next-generation features of its IDS and IPS.

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CA
Support Engineer & IT Professional at SISAP

The granularity which is used to confirm applications based in users. 

When you have VMware NSX, it is easy to deploy this virtual firewall because it is fully integrated with the VM solution. If I want to segment any type of network inside the data center, it is about two or three clicks, and it works.

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it_user848262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

It prevents data loss and business disruption.

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CB
System Administrator at DeepMap

It offers a single pane of glass for all the different types of installations.

The easy of use is pretty good.

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NiteshSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Architect at Network Techlab (I) Pvt. Ltd

The most effective features for threat prevention are application-based prevention and WildFire. These features cover various threats, such as ransomware, malware, etc. They provide real-time visibility. By applying appropriate policies, threats can be blocked.

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GK
Infrastructure Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Regarding Palo Alto, my company normally does a high availability configuration for our customers, which are active-active and active-passive. There are multiple add-on packages a customer can choose from in Palo Alto, including antivirus, web filtering, IDS, and IPS solutions.

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PT
Solution Architect at JM Family Enterprises

AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules. It has reduced the amount of time that it takes to apply firewall rules because everything is based in the cloud. It helps us to bring agility to the project teams when applying them.

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VG
IT Security Head with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS.

The work from home features, VPN and SSL VPN, are useful and part of the GlobalProtect functionality.

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KO
ICT Infrastructure Specialist (E-Transform Project) at Ministry of Communications and Information

All of the next-generation features are valuable and set Palo Alto apart from other firewalls.

The application filtering, or AppiID, and URL filtering are good.

The interface with Panorama makes it very easy to use.

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SS
System Administrator at a government with 201-500 employees

The most valuable features are security and support.

The packet routing speed is very good.

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DS
Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

A valuable feature of the solution is that it is not dependent on the hypervisor so we can install it on Hyper-V Microsoft software and deploy it. We have even installed it on Nutanix 81, in which it is supported. It is not dependent on the platform and is stable. 

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KS
Senior Network Architect at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The most valuable features are the User ID, URL filtering, and application filtering. These features have helped us a lot. 

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AS
Assistant Professor at Facultatea de Economie și Administrarea Afacerilor din Iași

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use. It takes maybe one week to learn how it works, but the suite itself is very flexible. After you install it, it's very easy to use because of the intuitive web interface.

It's great for me at the moment. I have all I need. All the traffic is very well filtered, and I believe it's the future of the firewall.

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IW
Solution sales at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy. 

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GA
Senior Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to route for them to be staged and installed. From that perspective, it's easy to launch and it's good because it is more scalable.

The product is quite responsive.

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GA
Senior Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed. From that perspective, it is easy to launch. It is also scalable.

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AC
Managing Partner at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

The best features are:

  • User identification
  • Application identification
  • Logs and monitoring.
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TD
Security Operations Specialist at a logistics company with 201-500 employees

The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically. 

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RO
System Engineer at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
  • Its strong intelligence is the feature that I like the most.
  • A solid operating system with all the necessary data center security features. 
  • Easy to manage.
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AP
Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • Full content inspection
  • Visibility into the traffic in AWS.
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it_user798924 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead Infrastructure at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

Threat management. That is very important, obviously. There has been a lot of press about hacking, virus vulnerabilities, the cron bug, etc. It is very important that we detect these as soon as it happens, so we can implement measures before they get on to our network. It is very good at doing that; it is very good at identifying these vulnerabilities.

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it_user1386156 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Specialist at Accretive Technologies Pvt Ltd

In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID. It's the biggest selling point in my opinion.

Another important application feature is the Content-ID.

The solution offers great templates.

Overall, the solution has a lot of great features on offer.

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RS
Network Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM. With a physical machine, you cannot the resources without adding something to the machine.

The management can be done from a single console window.

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Buyer's Guide
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.