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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CentOS Linux

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.N/A

    FortiGate

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AFortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
    Pricing
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—FortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    Chose CentOS Linux
    CentOs is the standard in the hosting industry when it comes to different versions of Linux OSs, it's almost an exact clone of Redhat so it fits in with every need pretty well as well as it being free to use as it is opensource. Ubuntu is a great desktop OS.
    Incentivized
    Fortinet
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    73%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    49 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    82%
    Happy with the feature set
    9 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    44 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    47 Answers
    Features
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of CentOS Linux and Fortinet FortiGate
    Feature
    CentOS Linux
    -
    Ratings
    Fortinet FortiGate
    8.7
    53 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.951 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.351 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings8.852 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.953 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.750 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.752 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.353 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.152 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings9.348 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.251 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings8.539 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Small Businesses
    Debian OS
    Score8.3 out of 10
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM AIX
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (22 ratings)
    8.7
    (79 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.7
    (21 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CentOS LinuxFortiGate
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    In any role where you need raw server power, CentOS Linux is extremely well suited. It is extremely stable, and in my experience, probably the most stable of the Linux distros available. It has a very wide base of support from 3rd party sources for additional functionality that do not come already in the CentOS Linux distribution itself. It is not as appropriate for situations that are customer facing or end user facing. For those, I recommend Ubuntu Linux. But for everything server & compute related, I recommend CentOS Linux.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • First of all, CentOS is one of the most secure and stable OSes straits from the box.
    • High performance on the average hardware.
    • In most of my scenarios—easy and quick deployment.
    • Huge KB community that helps to build and support different services on CentOS.
    • Versions lifecycle.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Fortinet
    • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
    • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
    • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Open Source
    • CentOS is not a great desktop platform. Although some would disagree with that statement, I think that CentOS is better suited to life as a server.
    • Since CentOS is community-supported some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
    • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
    • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Open Source
    It is a very typical server software, so you will have just the console. But it is still very easy to use, you can do anything from there and you have te built in manuals to review any information. For the other hand, if you need a graphical environment is not an issue, you can install any environment you what, Gnome, xfce, etc.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Open Source
    Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    CentOS is based on RHEL, so it really came down to the costs when making the selection between our options. RHEL offered more support and features, but nothing that we specifically needed. CentOS is fully customizable, something Windows Server was also lacking in many ways. The stability and speed was unmatched in comparison to Windows, and we were not utilizing any Windows-specific software to require us to use the Microsoft alternative. My years of experience have also made it a breeze to set up and configure new CentOS instances, leading me to stay where I'm comfortable.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    [Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    No changes needed to terms and conditions.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • CentOS's support of RPM packages makes it very easy to replicate RHEL servers for development or testing in cheap / free environments
    • CentOS's minimalistic desktop environment requires additional tweaking / packages if you want to have a usable desktop environment with the niceties of other modern distributions. As a result, if developers want to use CentOS, they'll need to spend more time customizing it than other distros.
    • CentOS's easy customization from the command line lends itself well to our virtualization infrastructure where setup can be easily scripted to modify CentOS's configuration files.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
    • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots