WatchGuard XTM 2 Series vs SonicWALL TZ Series

[Kona*]

Hi,

We currently supply WatchGuard XTM firewalls to our customers, usually the XTM 2 and 5 series (we deal with SMEs mainly) but we are finding it increasingly difficult to get a hold of the 2 series without waiting 5+ weeks for it to come in from any of the UK distributors. I've been on the hunt for an easy to setup and administer appliance firewall with content filtering, application control - all the usual things you would expect from a GUI-based UTM device.

One of our suppliers suggested the SonicWALL TZ series as a good alternative to the WatchGuard XTM 2 series - I've spoken with SonicWALL and they have talked me through what they say is better about their firewalls but I wanted to find out what you guys think, have any of you used both WatchGuard and SonicWALL devices? Their GUI doesn't look as intuitive but they are cheaper and stock levels are far better than WG devices.

Cheers,

Craig

 

[Kona*]

Thanks for the input chaps, any other opinions? The more the merrier!

We must have well over 100 SonicWalls of all sizes with customers and get very little hassle off them. Would be interested to know what probles Rangler had with them.

The SW GUI is very good IMHO, though I've been using them for years. NAT policies can look a little daunting perhaps but does give you a lot of options for handling traffic.

Which SonicWall distributor have you been speaking to Kona?

That's encouraging to hear. Our distributor for SonicWALL is Azlan/C2000 (I don't think mentioning a trade-only distributor is breaking the forum rules, apologies if it is)

Personally cannot stand the SW's had nothing but trouble with some 240's we put into a clients site.
If your struggling to get hold of WG's then drop me a message in trust we have no problem getting hold of them.

I'm out and about at the moment but once I'm back home I'll drop you a mail via trust, thanks

Craig

 

[Kona*]

Cheers chaps, we have just supplied and set up a TZ 200 for one of our customers. They are pretty straight forward, I'm not yet convinced they are better than WatchGuards but they are definitely on-par with them - the Setup Wizard for port forwarding was used (shame on me I know) to figure out exactly what NAT rules and firewall policy's were required but after that it was manual setup all the way.

Apparently the shortage of stock on the XTM 2 series was down to manufacturing problems but that's all been sorted out now and we shouldn't have any further problems