Watchguard. Keep or Replace?

[M4tty_j]

Hi Guys

 

I've just taken on my first school as a self-employed IT support guy.

 

The school has a watchguard appliance which was due to expire next week. We've renewed the licence for a year to buy us some time, but the appliance they have is EoL in December.

 

So my question is, seeing as we have to replace it anyway:

 

Do I stick with Watchguard, or can anyone recommend alternatives?

 

Its a 4-18 school so I need something that will cover everything. We're not a huge school, but it is growing.

[NB9457]

Depends on budget, but Smoothwall does everything in one box, fairly easy to use and has a whole host of settings and monitoring tools. Support isn't too bad either.

[CAWJames]

We have just purchased 4 Watchguards, 2 M300 and 2 M500.

 

We are moving away from Sonicwall units.

 

We used to be a Watchguard system years ago, but SW looked like a better bet at the time, then Dell bought them...

[manc_techie]

I'm using 2x M500 for Firewalls in H/A and more than happy, can't speak for the filtering but more than happy with it, WSM is a bit dated but the Web GUI is spoton

[mrwoberts]

@CAWJames, @manc_techie - I'd be interested in learning about your Watchguard solutions. I have just been looking at the units you mentioned and was wondering which one would be suitable for a small-ish infant school.

M300, M400, M440, M500?

Also, how about the filtering, would the Firebox also be your filtering solution?

Do you purchase any other add-ons, such as AV, or Threat Defense...

 

Thanks for your input.

[free780]

Is anyone using Smooth walls VPN for users connecting to via rdp?

[RobD]

I actually quite like Dell Sonicwalls but I may be the only person.......Juniper are awesome but confusing.

[manc_techie]

@mrwoberts I picked the M500 for our number of users 500ish, I didn't purchase the AV or Threat Detection as this sat directly in front of our web filter which offered these. I believe the web-filtering is using Websense our reseller were great, they were able to get me a test box for 30 days and Watchguard were offering at the time a second unit half price for H/A.

[ricki]

Also have a look at sophos utm