FortiManager vs. OpenNMS Meridian

FortiManager is well suited for any environment with multiple and dispersed FortiGate firewalls. It will not manage other firewall platforms. Therefore, you either have to use multiple centralized management software, one for each firewall vendor, or invest in alternative tools such as Tufin, AlgoSec, FireMon, SolarWinds, etc. However, you will not get a more inclusive tool for your FortiGate firewalls other than FortiManager.

Incentivized

I would recommend all system administrators use some form of network monitoring if they are not already doing so, and I'd definitely recommend people consider OpenNMS if they're shopping around. Small businesses will benefit from the low-cost of entry (it's free!), whilst getting all the enterprise features. Larger businesses can benefit from paid support plans.

However, there's no getting around the fact that you will require some advanced networking and sysadmin knowledge to get the most out of OpenNMS, or at least, be prepared for a steep learning curve. If you don't have the resources to devote this time initially, you may struggle.

Incentivized

• Centralized FortiGate FW Management in a single console
• Available physical, virtual, or cloud deployment
• Single console for next-generation FW features
• Multiple Administrative Domains

Incentivized

• Report on SLA
• Group network areas
• Discovery of elements

Incentivized

• Support contracts are difficult to manage or make changes to
• Next Generation subscriptions are managed individually, i.e. pegged to specific firewalls
• Cumbersome to bring existing firewalls to be covered under a single contract

Incentivized

• We've had a few issues with delayed alerting.
• I haven't quite figured out how to make topologies work yet, but I haven't spent a ton of time on it either.
• We've also had a bit of trouble importing some MIBs, but that usually boiled down to working with the vendor to make sure we had the right MIBs and dependencies.

Incentivized

FortiManager is the best choice for managing numerous FortiGate firewalls. It allows for easy integration into ServiceNow and automates simple repetitive tasks that are very straightforward. Role-based access control is easy to enable and you can get quite granular with user permissions. Administrative Domains help segregate firewall management and compliance within the FortiManager console, by almost any classification method that makes sense to your organization.

Incentivized

OpenNMS's more attractive GUI and its price break were the main reasons our company chose to explore and use this product. However, it never managed to actually replace Nagios which had a much more established hold within the company. Perhaps we were over-monitoring, but our company claimed a $100k loss per hour of downtime.

Incentivized

• Allowed for quick migration from legacy firewall platforms
• NOC and SOC visibility of entire threat surface
• Intuitive user interface
• Extremely quick learning curve

Incentivized

• Initial adoption required quite a lot of resources and time to get everything right. Totally worth it for us; just be prepared for a gradual process that will get better and better with time.
• Once setup and running smoothly, it provides us with all the reporting we could hope for, at near zero cost.
• With OpenNMS, we're able to offer a much more reliable service to our customers, and spend a lot less time dealing with issues.

Incentivized