3 & Free or Jump Ship
SonicAdmin80
Cybersecurity Overlord ✭✭✭
Most of the appliances I manage are still Gen 6.5. Now that SonicWall has significantly raised subscription prices for previous generation hardware I have a dilemma: Utilize the 3 & Free promo to upgrade older appliances and hope Gen 7 firmware stabilizes some day or move to a competitor.
I have been a SonicWall user for about 15 years and I really wouldn't want to learn another way to manage things in such a short time, if I want to make a decision before the promo ends. So unless I just jump cold I don't have the time to really do a proper comparison period. Although I haven't heard much good about certain other vendors' firmware quality either, but maybe at least tech support would be better.
What are others doing? Are you absorbing the price increase for the time being while waiting? Using Gen 7 but holding back on firmware upgrades and keeping your fingers crossed? Or planning to move elsewhere?
Comments
I have a client who has a TZ350 that was up for license renewal in October. The price increase was coming August 1, with anticipated 40% increase on the Gen 6.5 and 10% on the Gen 7 devices.
I mentioned that in the long run, it would be less expensive to take advantage of migrating to a TZ470 before the end of July. After I explained that it could save hundreds of dollars, my client agreed.
I took advantage of the 3 & Free pricing to cover the cost of my time to migrate the settings, verify they work, and go on the site visit to replace the device. Win-win.
I am sticking with 7.0.1-5151 on all Gen 7 devices until later this year when I will consider putting 7.1.1 on my TZ270 for testing.
Using Gen 7 and staying on 7.0.1 firmwares.
The early 7.0 versions were unstable and so seem to be the latest 7.1.x versions. The two Gen 7 units I have are running a later 7.0.1 firmware which seems most stable, but I'm a little worried it doesn't have the latest vulnerability fixes. But in most businesses stability goes over security.