SonicWall NSa Reviews

Our primary use case of NSa is for security. We are customers of SonicWall and I'm an IT administrator. 

The solution is user-friendly with good security and application control which is very important these days. 

The support is severely lacking with very slow response times. There are latency issues with this solution. I'd like to see improved performance and an updated dashboard.

I've been using this product for seven years. 

The stability is fine although there are some security and latency issues. 

The scalability is fine. 

Customer support requires additional engineers because their long response times are problematic. 

Neutral

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. We have several hundred users, predominantly IT specialists, engineers and developers. I'm the maintenance person for this product. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

Licensing costs are reasonable. 

In general, this is a good solution and I rate it eight out of 10.  

We use SonicWall NSA for IDS, IPS, Intrusion detection, and intrusion protection.

The most valuable features of this solution are intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, and the advanced capture client, which provides live traffic analysis.

Currently, the only issue that has been experienced is with expansion.

The model that we are using cannot expand very well, and the firewall is not able to handle all of them.

They could add some more features.

The current version does not have a duo power interface. It only has a single power interface, which has limitations in terms of high availability. Duo Power is a good feature to have.

The interface is an area that can be improved.

We acquired it in 2017. We have been using SonicWall NSA for four years.

We are using NSA 6600.

SonicWall NSA has been very reliable, mainly because of the ATP Capture Client and the IDS and IPS.

The scalability of SonicWall NSA is good.

We have regular contact with technical support.

When we send a support ticket, they respond to us within the day and resolve the issue.

They have a good response time.

We purchase the license on a yearly basis. 

They do have the option to purchase yearly, or two years, and three years of renewal. 

I believe the pricing is reasonable. There are some competitors that offer more features but are more expensive. 

For organizations and small businesses should choose SonicWall.

I would recommend the solution to others who are at an enterprise level.

With the features that are offered such as IDS, IPS, and ATP Capture Client, SonicWall is a bit higher than the average firewall.

I would rate SonicWall NSA an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for network security in our branch office.

One of the main features is the built-in storage capacity. 

The logging, reporting, and storage capacity size could improve in a future release.

I have been using this solution within the last 12 months.

The stability is good in this solution. 

The solution is scalable. There are 200 people using this solution in my companies branch office.

The technical support was very responsive.

I have used SonicWall TZ previously.

The installation was straightforward.

We are on a three-year license for the solution. The price is inexpensive compared to other solutions.

We have evaluated Sophos and Fortinet, SonicWall NSa we found to be much better.

I would recommend this solution to those who have between 150 to 500 users.

I rate SonicWall NSa a seven out of ten.

We are system integrators and we install products for our customers. It is mainly used in Universities, for corporate use, and in the government sector as a firewall.

What I like the most is that this is a one-time purchase with no renewal fees.

The stability is better than other products.

The pricing for this product in India is high and the fees should be reduced.

The visual process needs improvement.

Because of the price, our customers prefer PSA. The price is what needs to be addressed in the next release, it's the only that that matters.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

I have been using this solution for approximately 22 years.

This solution is stable.

This is a scalable product. As our customer need increases we plan to increase our usage.

Technical support is good and it is available online as well as offline.

Currently, I am using SonicWall and Wildcard.

The setup process was perfect.

It was straightforward and easy. This is not a complex product at all.

We handle the integration for our customers.

SonicWall is a one-time purchase and there is no renewal license.

I would not recommend this solution because the price is too high. More than 30% of our customers prefer PSA because of the price.

In summary, the product is good but the price is too high.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We are a managed service provider and SonicWall is our primary firewall. We offer this solution to customers as part of a rental program, as well as sell them outright.

The most valuable feature is the Global Management System. This is the driving force behind why we continue to use it.

Having to deal with too many lower-level people in technical support means that it takes longer to resolve issues, so escalating support tickets should be faster.

I have bee using SonicWall at this company for nine years, although it was SonicWall TZ prior to SonicWall NSA. This company has been using it for longer than that. I also have experience with SonicWall that predates my time here.

SonicWall is very stable.

I don't think that scalability is a pertinent criterion for firewalls because they're hard-coded by the ASICs that go into them. When we rent a firewall to a customer instead of selling one, that customer has an upgrade path available. In this regard, it is scalable because we can switch them to a larger model if they outgrow it. Otherwise, it's limited by the ASIC.

The technical support from SonicWall is good. However, if it were easier to access where you were not stuck in a queue of people and forced to escalate problems it would be a bonus. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

Overall, this is a good solution and it's doing the job we need it to do. By in large, we don't have any complaints. There are always things that can be easier, but it's doing the job.

My advice for anybody who is implementing SonicWall NSA is that you can't be an expert on every brand. This means that you should pick a model, learn it very well, and build relationships with the support people at the vendor.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The NSA 2400 is used as our edge device. We subscribe to two services.

• Comprehensive Gateway Security Suite
• Anti Spam Service

The ability to configure the appliances for efficient usage.

• Content filtering
• Anti-Spam
• URL blocking
• Bandwidth management
  

• Content filtering reduces the load on the available bandwidth and restricts employees from using distracting websites on the job, which leads to more productive hours.
• Anti-Spam reduces unwanted mail on corporate exchange services.

After-sales support and hands-on training facilities are poor or not available in my country. Improving these will help users like me optimally manage and administer this solution.

I like that you can run a packet capture from within SonicWall and configure it to automatically upload the packet captures to an FTP server. This is useful when trying to troubleshoot an intermittent issue. It can capture for as long as you have disk space on the FTP server.

We are more aware of security issues since SonicWall can be configured to send e-mail alerts. Server-side Outlook rules and Exchange transport rules (more informational subject lines) can be helpful in sorting and making sense of the many alerts it can generate. We have also configured it to send logs to a syslog server. They also offer SonicWall Analyzer which can reportedly be very helpful when viewing logs but I have no experience with it.

I am not sure if SonicWall has finally addressed this issue but a major area for improvement would be being able to export the settings file in a non-binary readable and editable format. It is not possible to export, make changes and then upload a revised configuration. Since the settings file is binary and non-readable, it seems to always be suspect when any strange issues arise with the appliance. I have had their techical support many times through the years question whether our settings file was corrupt. Of course it would be very easy to know if it was possible to look at it but it’s binary.

Another issue we had was with SonicWall auto-creating firewall rules for VPN tunnels until I learned to disable that feature and not allow it. SonicWall will not let an admin delete an auto-created object. I personally believe an admin should be able to delete anything. We had cases where a VPN tunnel was deleted first and auto-created objects for the tunnel would get abandoned. Other objects can also get abandoned. A time or two I was able to delete abandoned objects by recreating what created them in the first place and then deleting things in the right manner to cause the auto-deletion of the objects. If that doesn’t work, you will need to restore from a backup settings file or live with the abandoned object(s). We made it a policy to always backup the settings before any change and again after the change with the file names of the settings files reflecting what was changed. It also helps to send an e-mail to the team or record in a ticket details on any changes made, e.g. screen shots of all changes. If the settings file becomes corrupt you will need to load a previous settings file. It will be helpful to have a previous version along with a record of all changes made since that settings file was saved. This is another example of how helpful it would be to be able to view the settings file, make changes and delete objects if needed and then reload it. It would be so much easier and faster.

I have used SonicWall products for about eleven years, these models for about eight years. They are near EOL.

Years ago, we would often have problems after firmware upgrades. Once after a firmware upgrade all firewall rules were still present except for HTTP and HTTPS which of course meant our web servers were dead until all the rules were recreated. We began to experience spontaneous reboots after another firmware upgrade. In recent years, they now issue early release firmware, often many versions of it, until they release a new general release. We never upgrade to early release and chose to only use general release after it’s been released for three months (true for all vendor firmware and software) and after we have searched for horror stories on the Internet. You can also open a tech support case and specifically ask the tech if the firmware is still considered a good and stable release. They will usually tell you honestly whether it is or not. We have had technical support tell us early release is tested and just as good as general release firmware while other technical support has told us it is not fully QA-tested and might cause problems. Using only general release firmware, our SonicWall has been rock solid and very stable for many years even when they were newer and had more frequent firmware releases.

We never tried to scale it.

SonicWall technical support is quite good. As with all contact with any technical support, I always document the issue, who I spoke to and their response. This can prove to be very valuable if trying to demonstrate a longstanding issue. It helps to have in hand previous dates, case numbers, names of previous tech support with notes on what they said and details on the previous attempts to fix things. For the most part, SonicWall technical support can quickly identify and resolve most issues.

We had a SonicWall 5060 PRO and upgraded to the SonicWall NSA 4500s. They are near EOL and another upgrade will soon be required.

I built them from scratch since our settings file in the 5060 PRO was suspected to have corruption. I documented all of the settings in the previous firewall and manually created all of the address objects, service objects, firewall and NAT rules to duplicate what was in the SonicWall 5060 PRO. I previously built the 5060 PRO so I knew it was configured correctly.

SonicWall absolutely has the best bang for the buck hands down. Other firewalls are two to three times as expensive both in initial cost and recurring maintenance cost. SonicWall does not require duplicate licenses if you have an HA-pair in Active/Passive mode since only one unit will be active at any given time, which is a big savings in cost compared to other vendors. If you buy a security bundle you get even greater savings. SonicWall does, however, license user VPN access unlike most other vendors.

It’s been so long ago I can’t remember.

At the time of this post SonicWall is now owned by private equity firm Francisco Partners and Elliott Management. I would research those firms and form an opinion as to the possible future of SonicWall and then decide accordingly. If you have already made your purchase, utilize tech support often if needed. They have been invaluable to me through the years and have always helped me in getting answers to any questions. They have always been there to assist me in setting up something new and unfamiliar when needed.

We use it to secure the perimeter of our company. We use all the integrated features of this Next-Generation Firewall. We are using NSA 3650.

The bandwidth consumption of the company has improved since we took control and restricted the music on YouTube being accessed on office computers. A lot of computers in the company were streaming, and we used the intelligent application control feature to control that.

Deep packet inspection and intelligent application control are the most valuable features. 

It is a very updated solution. It is very current as compared to other brands and vendors.

I would like to have a built-in vulnerability scanner in the firewall. It would be great to have such functionality. Its price could also be better.

It would also be good to have a local warehouse. It doesn't get damaged a lot, but if a customer needs a replacement, currently, it has to come from Miami or Mexico, which can take a few days. It would be better if they have a local warehouse from where we can just pick replacements and quickly solve a client's needs in terms of replacing equipment. It would be great to have it locally instead of waiting for it from Mexico or the USA.

I have been using this solution for approximately seven years.

It is stable. We have been representing SonicWall in Panama for approximately seven years. Our customers usually don't need any help from us. We don't have any customer attacks or downtime because of the lack of features in the product. It has been a very good experience.

SonicWall has 12 different models for enterprises and service providers. They have a wide range of models to meet the needs of customers of all sizes.

We have all kinds of clients. We have service providers, and we have small, medium, and big companies as clients. In the biggest company, there are 25,000 users. It is a university here in Panama.

It is always there when we need it. They have a very good service.

Customers usually had FortiGate or WatchGuard. Those are the two major brands that we have replaced with SonicWall.

SonicWall is being represented by us here in Panama. FortiGate is a very strong solution here in Panama, but we're trying to get them out of our way. Price is the biggest thing that we might use to replace them. 

Support from the vendor is also a big thing here. WatchGuard has no representatives in Panama. They have no presence, so, it is very easy to replace them, but FortiGate is a difficult one to replace.

It is straightforward. It has a wizard, and you just follow the steps. 

It took us one month because our personnel had to be trained. We need two or three people for its deployment. It is not that demanding on services.

We implemented it with the assistance of SonicWall. 

It would be better if it has a better price, but its price is okay considering the benefits that you receive.

The operating system of all boxes is pretty much the same for enterprises as well as small businesses. It has the same behavior from the smallest model to the biggest one, which is a major advantage of SonicWall.

I would rate SonicWall NSA an eight out of ten.