Which UTM ??

[richbrowncardiff]

Hi All,

 

What UTM do you use ?

 

Been looking at Smoothwall, Checkpoint, Watchguard, Barracuda and Sophos.

 

Does anyone use Sophos as a VM ? Waiting for Costs but "should" be cheaper than a hardware appliance

 

Cheers

[Norphy]

I use Smoothwall at the moment. It's a better filter than it is a firewall imo but it's mostly good enough. We run our Smoothwalls as VMs and our virtual hosts seem to cope now that we've stopped using Kerberos as an authentication method.

 

I used SonicWALL in a previous job. It's probably worth looking at them too, I don't know if it still applies but when they were owned by Dell schools got massive discounts on them. They were as cheap or cheaper for their hardware appliances (which are "proper" appliances, not x86 boxes running a *nix variant like Smoothwall and Sophos) as others were for their software ones. It's an excellent firewall with an improving filter and an excellent reporting engine for safeguarding stuff.

 

I remember that @FN-GM said that he runs Smoothwall as an internal firewall/filter and SonicWALL as the edge firewall but I think that's only possible if you've got pots of money!

[mjk]

Fortigate it worth a look too. Came out cheaper than Smoothwall/Sophos for us =- which we didn't expect as it's largely targeted as a commercial Firewall and not education like Smoothwall et al.

Seems to do all of the Prevent/Safeguarding reports well and is fast.

[richbrowncardiff]

Ok great thanks what spec VM's do you Run ? How many clients ? I will have 2k clients and 1gbps internet connection.

[Norphy]

8 vCPUs (though could now get away with less I suspect), 16GB RAM and running on SSD storage for the logs. One copes with around 2000 clients, the other with 1000. Both sites have 200Mbps internet connections but these are being upgraded soon.

[cpjitservices]

There are a couple of Open Source UTM's too which are pretty good.

 

Endian: Open Source Firewall and UTM | Endian Firewall Community

Untangle: https://www.untangle.com/

 

With Untangle, you can enable 'premium' features which you subscribe too. Those features are optional.

[sparkeh]

We use Sophos UTM but as a hardware appliance.

 

We moved from Smoothwall and have been really pleased with it. If you have any specific questions just let me know [emoji3]

[richbrowncardiff]

Great thanks all !

 

I wont use the free stuff as i have to cover myself and if i'm paying for something i have backup if its needed!

[Roberto]

I used SonicWALL in a previous job. It's probably worth looking at them too, I don't know if it still applies but when they were owned by Dell schools got massive discounts on them. They were as cheap or cheaper for their hardware appliances (which are "proper" appliances, not x86 boxes running a *nix variant like Smoothwall and Sophos) as others were for their software ones. It's an excellent firewall with an improving filter and an excellent reporting engine for safeguarding stuff.

 

The pricing for SonicWALL is pretty keen still I would say. I've been happy with it from both a price and performance/behaviour aspect.

[DrCheese]

We use Sophos UTM but as a hardware appliance.

 

We moved from Smoothwall and have been really pleased with it. If you have any specific questions just let me know [emoji3]

 

Heya,

 

Our smoothwall renewal is due next year & based on what I'm reading the cost is likely to be extremely high - Would be interested in how much you've managed to save by moving to Sophos & if it offers a BYOD feature similar to smoothwall (i.e kids sign in once and that's it)

 

thanks

[SchoolsBroadband]

+1 for Fortigate here.

 

Fortinet are the world's 3rd biggest firewall/UTM vendor and you get a lot of bang for your buck as they have dedicated asic chipsets and content processors to move processing from the standard cpus.

 

We use big virtualised 1000 and 3000 series in our core. They're excellent pieces of kit.

 

Dave

[abrigham]

Hey Guys,

I look after around alot schools using all of the above. I have some great pros and cons from everyone. My advice is FortGates and Sophos but give me a PM and I can give you further advice.

[nicholab]

We are using a Sophos UTM provided as a service so no hardware cost up front. So far I am pleased with the unit but did have a few issue with false positives on the web filtering. I have also put Google and Youtube safe searches in place with DNS but have yet to work out how staff can get round this to give better access to educational videos.

[mcolbourn]

I would highly recommend Watchguard we use two of their UTMs here and they are both great

[Homer]

I'll throw my hat in the ring with Sonicwall - it has matured a lot over the past few years the content filter works well and it is very good at the firewall/routing/everything else side of jobs. The management UI is also better than Smoothwall I now think, having had experience with Smoothwall a few years ago and encountering it again at a different school last month I am firmly in the Sonicwall camp for manageability, performance and feature set... and probably pricing too!

[richbrowncardiff]

Thanks all,

 

Decided upon sophos in the end. from initial testing very pleased. Time shall tell but so far so good.

[p3t3r]

We currently have a Sophos UTM 550. Good fir security, reliability, and performance. However, it does have some short comings:

 

Reporting is terrible. They are slow to produce and the information they provide is often useless.

No RADIUS authentication for seamless integration with our Aruba wireless.

Kerberos SSO is ok except there is often a delay when switching users. It takes too long for it to refresh the policy.

Mac authentication is also inadequate.

No Chromebook SSO.

 

I'm not sure if there is such a thing as the perfect UTM.

[caffrey]

I also take in to account the time it takes to introduce and learn a new system as cost

 

I recently got a quote for Sophos vs Smoothwall and the price was more or less the same over 3 years, although Sophos does come with it's own hardware and I just use my own with Smoothwall (Usually just a refurb from ICT-Direct)

[Blue_Cookeh]

I also take in to account the time it takes to introduce and learn a new system as cost

 

I recently got a quote for Sophos vs Smoothwall and the price was more or less the same over 3 years, although Sophos does come with it's own hardware and I just use my own with Smoothwall (Usually just a refurb from ICT-Direct)

 

Interesting - when we had a quote (both with hardware, +1 for Smoothwall as a VM) Sophos came out vastly cheaper over 3 years. I've done this twice now (our renewal just came up for Sophos) and it was still the same :/

[Steve21]

Interesting - when we had a quote (both with hardware, +1 for Smoothwall as a VM) Sophos came out vastly cheaper over 3 years. I've done this twice now (our renewal just came up for Sophos) and it was still the same :/

 

Seems to vary a lot depending when you get a quote. Sophos for us came out over twice the price of Smoothie even though lots said like you they were getting it cheaper

 

Steve

[caffrey]

Depends on the appliance too I guess ? I was quoted for a SG330

[localzuk]

Depends on the appliance too I guess ? I was quoted for a SG330

What size is your network and internet connection? As a rough idea to see if you were over-specced there.

[caffrey]

What size is your network and internet connection? As a rough idea to see if you were over-specced there.

 

300Mb leased line, approx 300 network devices and lots of wireless clients

Edited September 21, 2017 by ZeroHour
removing quote of rumours - zh

[localzuk]

300Mb leased line, approx 300 network devices and lots of wireless clients

Huh, we have a slower connection at this school and were sold the SG 430. The Smoothwall equipvalent was around 30% more expensive!

[Steve21]

Huh, we have a slower connection at this school and were sold the SG 430. The Smoothwall equipvalent was around 30% more expensive!

 

Out of curiosity what sort of pricing did you get on the Sophos just roughly if you can say? The "cheapest" one we had for our place was £19k for 3 years, if we wanted the full UTM package was about £25k

 

Every other firewall quote out there beat Sophos hands down for us, that's why I'm always so surprised when people say it's cheaper

 

Steve