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

Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Score

9.2 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

The Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewall has found a wide range of use cases based on user experiences. Customers have deployed this firewall as a parameter firewall and site-to-site VPN gateway in their datacenters, providing robust security and protection against threats from websites and emails. The firewall logs all attempts to breach the system, sending notifications to administrators for proactive measures.

One key use case for the VM Series is its application in micro-segmentation implementation in the Datacenter. With its performance, scalability, and advanced layer 7 features, the VM Series firewall is well-suited for creating secure network segments within the datacenter environment. Additionally, organizations have chosen the VM-series Palo Alto solution as a cost-effective alternative to physical appliances, leveraging its speed and features for outbound browsing and inbound firewall needs.

Customers have also utilized the AD/Exchange agents provided by the Palo Alto VM series firewalls to simplify management by user. These agents enable monitoring of web traffic and SSL traffic decryption, adding an extra layer of control and visibility over user activities. Particularly during the pandemic, the VM-200 firewall has been implemented in branches to protect internal networks, establish site-to-site VPNs, and enable remote work.

Moreover, organizations have leveraged the Palo Alto VM series firewalls to extend their security measures to public cloud environments while replicating the same level of security as on-premises. By offering full inline threat protection, simplified VPN configuration, and scalable interfaces, these firewalls provide reliable access control in a VMware environment.

Overall, users appreciate the high throughput, reliability, and security offered by Palo Alto's Virtualized Next-Generation Firewall. With its diverse range of use cases across datacenters, branches, and public cloud environments, this product proves to be an essential component in safeguarding networks against modern cyber threats.

Reviews

10 Reviews

PA Virtual NGFW what I think about it

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 15, 2025

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.

Pros

it helps putting policies based on application and not only port or IP
it provide all the features and functionality with the flexibility of virtual footprint, so scalability is not a challenge.
comparatively easy to implement policies like SAML for SSo etc.
well suited for a SSE environment,
overall reliability is good for a virtual NGF of PAL, we used multiple models on VMxx

Cons

I think if we can do a better on resource requirement like vCPU, Memory etc. it is a bit higher side versus the competition.
can we simply the licenses like BYOC or PAYG.
can we see some development to have features like policy as code for cloud native requirement. it can be better from current situation

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.

Ashwani Tyagi

solution architect in Engineering at orange business (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

4 years of experience

Great features and performance for a relatively small cost.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 22, 2025

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.

Pros

Manage Zones & VLANS.
Define and manage traffic rules.
Enforce and monitor traffic flows.

Cons

Major Version Upgrades.
Managing Large amounts of rules.
Debugging rules.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Intelligent firewall and VMware NSX support.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 16, 2022

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.

Pros

Virtualized firewall.
Rack and datacenter space savings.
Optimized for medium density of concurrently connected users.
Site to site VPN.
Remote VPN.
URL and application control for users.

Cons

It does not support SSL decription for high throughput of connections.
Guaranteed use of licenses are expensive.

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.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Very strong product

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 3, 2022

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.

Pros

user identification
application filtering
clustering

Cons

dashboards
GUI
price

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.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Best in class Datacenter Solution

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2022

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

Pros

L7 Firewall policies
Virtualized performance
Credit usage to scaleup o scaledown solution

Cons

SD-WAN implementation
No compatibility with OpenVPN clients
Historical logging

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

Diego Carmignani

IT Infrastructure Coordinator in Information Technology at Cartiere Carrara S.p.A. (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Palo Alto Firewall is The Firewall of the Future.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2022

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.

Pros

Sink holing access to command and control threats
Deep packet inspection
Secure remote access VPN via Global protect

Cons

High Availability can be improved to allow active-active deployment
All command line documentation to provide and support automation
It will be nice to have link aggregation just like in the hardware firewall models.

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.

Shephered Moyo

Systems Engineer in Information Technology at The M9 Group (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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Awesome Secure Web Gateway

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 21, 2021

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.

Pros

Decrypt internet traffic
daily reporting of top internet users
classify internet traffic in real-time to allow us to understand the organization needs.
Strong AI capabilities

Cons

needs SD-WAN and cloud security in an integrated solution.
need stronger state-side support
requires significant compute resources

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.

Ronald Barrett

Director of Information Technology in Information Technology at City of Marietta, GA (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Secure Public Cloud

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 11, 2020

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.

Pros

Securing public cloud on same level as an on-premise environment.
Ease of migration and management, similar to physical infrastructure.

Cons

Provide same level of security features as physical firewall.
Pay-per-use and flexibility in licensing.

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.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

PAN - Solid Choice!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 6, 2018

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.

Pros

Easy deployment.
Backups, snapshotting, etc. make returning to pre-change state a snap.
Threat management, data leak protection, etc. can be done in-line with ease.

Cons

I feel like there is not enough of a support community, similar to checkpoint.
VPN client is not as user-friendly as Anyconnect.
No root access to device.

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).

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Firewalls: "Virtually" the Greatest

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 13, 2017

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.

Pros

GlobalProtect SSL-VPN/IPsec server and client are top notch.
The web interface and CLI are both very well documented and easy to use.
Technical support is knowledgeable and treats tier 1 issues with all due haste.

Cons

Sometimes the configuration gets out of sync between HA peers, it won't sync, and it also won't say why.
Every time I log in I get warned that the logfile partition is almost full. Yes, I know that, you're deleting the oldest ones, I know: stop telling me about it with a giant pop-up at login.
I like green, but I wish I could choose mauve as a background color for the web interface.

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.

Bear Golightly

IT Operations Manager / IT Service Manager in Information Technology at Nashville Wraps (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Reviews and Ratings

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Firewalls: "Virtually" the Greatest

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 13, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

GlobalProtect SSL-VPN/IPsec server and client are top notch.
The web interface and CLI are both very well documented and easy to use.
Technical support is knowledgeable and treats tier 1 issues with all due haste.

Cons

Sometimes the configuration gets out of sync between HA peers, it won't sync, and it also won't say why.
Every time I log in I get warned that the logfile partition is almost full. Yes, I know that, you're deleting the oldest ones, I know: stop telling me about it with a giant pop-up at login.
I like green, but I wish I could choose mauve as a background color for the web interface.

Likelihood to Recommend

Bear Golightly

IT Operations Manager / IT Service Manager in Information Technology at Nashville Wraps (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile