VMware SD-WAN vs. WatchGuard XTM - Discontinued Product

VMware SD WAN is a great solution for tying multiple locations together that are not physically located close. The link aggregation used in the technology allows for quicker failover to redundant connections, which makes the surface traffic seem to be uninterrupted. If planning to connect multiple locations while utilizing the existing internet, Veloclouds SDWAN provides stable and accurate aggregation of connections that provide a good sense of stability for the price.

Incentivized

WatchGuard XTM comes in different models, so you can choose the model best suited for your company size. I think it works well in small as well as very large networks. I have not used this feature, but you can create a "FireCluster" to connect member devices of the same model if you need to put multiple WatchGuard XTMs in your environment. Coming from command line, it took a little adjusting to learn which screen to use to set up the different rules. Once you understand how to set up policies, it is simple to create more. New firewall administrators would appreciate the ease of creating policies, and expert administrators should find everything they need plus extra features.

Incentivized

• Direct cloud access.
• Scalable growth for network infrastructure.
• Flexible control over application data flows.

Incentivized

• Proxy filter.
• Link redundancy.
• Security.

• The learning curve of deploying VeloCloud is steep, so unless you're a networking expert, the initial setup might be over your head.
• I think they may be able to improve their web interface to provide a better user interface.
• I've experienced a couple of interesting bugs which have required reboots to resolve.

Incentivized

• Support can be hard to work with. While they are typically knowledgeable, there can be a language barrier. Also, most troubleshooting seems intrusive which is a problem in a production environment.
• The throughput of the cheaper models leaves something to be desired.
• Have had some issues running VOIP behind these, but have not been able to narrow down the issues to the phone provider or WatchGuard yet.

Incentivized

Its good.

Incentivized

Because the FortiGate is a true firewall with all the UTM features, that is the only thing that I would say beats the VC in that aspect. Silverpeak has a very nice solution, but it is a bit cumbersome when using the GUI to configure and manage. WatchGuard is a UTM firewall, but fall short on the SD-WAN portion of their solution compared to Velocloud.

Incentivized

Again, WatchGuard is priced much lower than other vendors in its space. It may not have some of the bigger features such as Layer 7 awareness. It's more simple to manage and provides IT staff the time to work on other tasks versus time spent to create complex rule sets.

Incentivized

• Inclusion of this product has led to our removal of old point to point and self managed wireless tower communication.
• Switching to Velocloud SDWAN allowed us to remove distributed repository style framework and embrace a newer option.
• Switching to SDWAN has already mitigated several instances of connections going down and the quick failover means there was no business interruption.

Incentivized

• Easy to set up and connect firewalls
• Easy to set up branch tunnels
• Less time spent training