pfSense vs. VMware SD-WAN

pfSense is incredibly budget friendly and capable for organizations of all sizes. My specific scenario, working for a non-profit organization, requires budget consciences decisions without compromising security and function. pfSense has helped tremendously in accomplishing this. It specifically tackles advanced routing, static routing, remote access, intrusion prevention, in a single platform, mostly available for free.

Incentivized

VeloCloud was the #1 choice out of various POCs performed when migrating off of MPLS into an ADI/public internet circuit environment. Their ability to also be top of rack with certain software vendors played a major role in improving user experience. Their dynamic DMPO and circuit load balancing can cause some challenges when working with other entities that use a static whitelisting service for access to resources.

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• Ease of setup: after unpacking the device, you can have your VC appliance up and running within minutes.
• Now that VMWare owns the Velocloud solution, I believe that they will be able to invest in the product to say fresh and ahead of the competition.
• The technical support is one of the best I have ever interacted with and continue to follow up until the issue is resolved.

Incentivized

• There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
• Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.

Incentivized

• VMware SD-WAN could provide cli access for troubleshooting
• VMware SD-WAN boxes could have more ports
• VMware SD-WAN box could have more applications to provide more health and visibility of the traffic passing through

pfSense can be a very elementary firewall but can also be as comples as you want, according your needs. I'd always reccomend a HA solution when used in a company and, for bigger companies, commercial license is recommended. It's also very adptable to everyone's needs.

Incentivized

VMware SD-WAN has great usability. We have had a positive experience with the solution. It has helped solved a number of issues with our network such as visibility in user usage, application usage, and prioritizing critical application network traffic. VMware SD-WAN user interface is also very easy to understand and configure.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

There are still some glitches that need to be worked out. As an example, I rebooted a device at one of our branch locations and it just died. That should never have happened, and I've only seen this happen when a company needs to improve hardware on some of their lower-end models.

Incentivized

PFSense is not a fully featured and supported enterprise-grade solution; however, it does offer a lot of similar functionality at a fraction of the cost for more minor requirements.

We preferred the features and UI of the Velocloud compared to FortiGate SDWAN. They seemed to offer the same sets of information in different layouts. Our company decided on Velocloud for personal/aesthetic reasons. They offered a more concise set of graphs and tables out of the box for us. SD WAN provided us a with a broader look into our connections with a more robust view, which Velocloud backed by Vmware, gave us.

Incentivized

• pfSense has only had positive impacts on our company. We are not a huge company so not having to buy licenses to get all these features have been excellent.
• I was not around when our current sysadmin decided to use pfSense, but I am assuming from day one it was probably a 100% return on investment since it does everything we need it to and it was open source software.

Incentivized

• We are able to save thousands per month by eliminating MPLS from our monthly service.
• We were able to convert the cost of VeloCloud to an operational expense by renting through our ISP.
• We have been able to eliminate downtime in situations which would have normally taken our branches offline, preventing us from servicing customers.

Incentivized