Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

virtual NGFW address the hardware footprint issue which help us and our customer to provision site pre-requisites to host a appliance based firewall like rack/power space/operation overheads etc. it extend the flexibility to accommodate this NGFW in hybrid infra environment.

Likelihood to Recommend

VM based NGFW from PAN give us similar strong NGFW platform in virtual footprint to address some of hybrid scenarios of the customer where they have on-premise and cloud environment. specially where it is hard to get the appliance based solution. different licensing model give us flexibility to leverage the PAN licensing.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use these firewalls in our production systems networks (Operational Technology) to manage the various security zones and traffic between them. This is part of our production-critical network and a critical component of our security infrastructure.

Likelihood to Recommend

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We implemented the VM-200 firewall in some branches during the pandemic in 2020 to protect the internal network, interconnect some sites with site-to-site vpn and mainly create an environment for mobility and remote work using the remote vpn. The virtual firewall was implemented in VMware environment on existing servers. The PaloAlto VM-200 offers high throughput, reliability, security and access control of devices, web and applications with a layer 7 firewall. Most of the problems were solved with this solution integrated with other tools to make remote work more flexible and improve the internal network protection from external threats and data theft.

Likelihood to Recommend

PaloAlto VM-200 is a virtualized firewall with high processing power and network edge protection. The great advantage is being able to implement in a VMware environment without worrying about hardware, rack space, physical network connections and others. It can be easily managed via the web and remotely to create protection, access and reporting rules. The VM-200 firewall can be used by any company, small or large because it has several models available according to the real needs of each one.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls VM series are next generation firewalls that could be deployed on-premises or in cloud. They are used especially in urgent needs to establish new firewall instance with high capacities. and could be easily duplicated and saved in case of failures. I already installed many Vm series in many network environments.

Likelihood to Recommend

Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls VM-series are prefect for edge firewalling, VPN concentrator and East-West traffic filtering scenarios. The most used scenario is increasing VPN capacity in urgent cases like remote working. In this case VM series is perfect because it can immediately be installed which could not be done with bare metal appliances.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We decided to purchase VM Series because we implement micro-segmentation into the Datacenter. We needed performance, scalability, and l7 feature are using Palo Alto physical appliances so why not implement their VM Solution into a High Density VMWare environment

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it's the best in class enterprise solution because at the right cost you can implement a Firewall VM with all features that an Enterprise Company requires (L7, performance, easy to use, scalable) In my experience is less appropriate when you want to implement it in a ROBO (cost is too high). In fact, we prefer to sacrifice some features (like L7 policies) and implement something from another vendor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewall is deployed at one of our customers' datacenter. It is serving as a parameter firewall and a site-to-site VPN gateway. It is running Global Protect for management access out of band access. The firewall protects against threats via websites and emails. Any attempts to breach the firewall is logged and an email is sent to all administrators including management and a ticket is logged.

Likelihood to Recommend

With the coming of cloud computing, this firewall can be deployed in most public and private clouds. Be it AWS, Azure, Google cloud, VMWARE, or Hyper-V it works well in all these scenarios. Daily snapshots can easily be taken from which a rollback can be done if there is a need to restore the firewall to a previously known working state. The flexibility of this firewall makes it more favorable for use in today's environments.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The solution is used across the entire enterprise. We monitor web traffic and decrypt SSL traffic with these units. The decision to decrypt traffic was a difficult decision but the correct one for the organization. This provides more visibility into what is traversing the network and helps IT determine what has actually occurred should there be any kind of incident.

Likelihood to Recommend

The ability to decrypt traffic is exceptional and has been useful many times in our organization. The analytic capabilities provide significant insight into internet behavior. We do not utilize it as the primary firewall, because it is not quite as robust as our core firewall vendor.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Palo Alto VM series firewalls are used across the organization in protecting our public cloud environment.

Demand in the public cloud is ever-growing. More companies are now migrating to public cloud (Azure, AWS, GCP). Public cloud environments also need to be equally secured as on-prem environment. Palo Alto VM series firewalls allow you to replicate the same level of security on public cloud as well.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for a hybrid network model where you would like to extend your existing infrastructure and security policies to the public cloud. With security up to layer 7, it helps you deploy all the security policies on the public cloud.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PAN has been a fantastic boon to our users by doing full inline threat protection, Easy VPN configuration, including a uniform interface that scales from small devices to large devices.

Likelihood to Recommend

PAN does a great job at classifying traffic, and rate-limiting said traffic at line rate. (Very similar to Bluecoat/Packetteer's Packet Shaper) This also alleviates the need for a second device to do bandwidth control. I believe that it's a great user-based, and security-focused device, and one of the few that can produce a positive enforcement model (Deny first).

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We've been using the VM-series Palo Alto solution in a two-unit HA configuration running on our hardware as an affordable alternative to the PA-series hardware firewalls, without sacrificing speed or features. It services both outbound browsing (NAT, URL-based and deep inspection security) and inbound firewall (signature-based attack mitigation) needs. The AD/Exchange agents make it simple to manage by user, not by device.

Likelihood to Recommend

There's almost certainly a Palo Alto product to fit your organization's needs, although a PA VM-200 might be overkill for a small branch office. However, given the modest pricing of the VM-series, the central management capabilities of Panorama, and the site-to-site VPN capabilities of the Palo Alto platform, I can imagine recommending small PA VM-series appliances in place of small PA hardware appliances for branch sites that already have virtualization, especially if you have a number of branch offices - the cost reduction from centralized management would more than pay for the "premium" solution vs a typical branch router device.