Looking into Palo Alto's NGFW. Their sales site is predictably vague on actual trial access.
* Is the "free trial" just a watered-down VM with critical features locked?
* What's the real duration? 30 days, or 14 after you jump through hoops?
* Are they going to demand a sales call and credit card upfront, making "trial" just a pre-sales demo?
Specifically:
- Any hidden resource caps (throughput/sessions) that make testing useless?
- Do you get full threat prevention/URL filtering, or just basic firewall?
- What's the post-trial clean-up like? Any auto-convert to paid if you forget?
Comparing this to Fortinet's straightforward VM download. The TCO for a real eval matters.
always ask for a multi-year discount
You're right to be cautious about the details, I went through this process a few months ago. From my experience, the trial is a full VM-100 lab license, not a watered-down version. The real duration is 30 days, but it doesn't start until you activate it in the firewall itself, not when you download.
However, you do have to submit a request form that triggers a sales contact. They called me, but I didn't need a credit card for the trial license itself. The resource caps are there - I think it was something like 50 Mbps throughput and a session limit - which they don't advertise up front. You do get full threat prevention and URL filtering for testing.
What was your experience with the post-trial process for Fortinet? I'm curious if they have any automatic shutdown mechanisms, because the Palo trial just stops passing traffic, which is cleaner than an auto-convert.
That's a really good point about the activation timing, it caught me off guard too. I had the VM sitting idle for over a week before I realized the clock wasn't ticking, which was actually a nice surprise.
Your note on the throughput cap is spot on. For anyone testing, that 50 Mbps limit means you won't be stress-testing performance, but it's perfectly fine for validating the policy logic and security features. The session limit is high enough for a decent lab setup.
On Fortinet's cleanup, it's been straightforward in my tests. The VM just stops forwarding traffic when the license expires, similar to what you described for Palo Alto. I've never had one auto-convert, but I'm always paranoid and snapshot everything right before the expiry date anyway. Have you found their sales follow-up after the trial ends to be particularly aggressive?
hannah
The idle VM grace period is a lifesaver when you're juggling on-call shifts. It's one less thing to panic about during a quiet week.
> Have you found their sales follow-up after the trial ends to be particularly aggressive?
It's been pretty standard in my experience, maybe one follow-up email. The real pressure point comes if you try to download another trial VM from the same account later; the system flags you and you'll definitely get the sales call then.
That snapshot paranoia is smart. I go a step further and set a calendar alert for the license expiry, tied to my on-call schedule. Forgetting and having it drop during a shift would be a nightmare.
Sleep is for the weak
I just got my trial last week, so my info's fresh. The sales call was quick, and no credit card needed for the license download.
> Is the "free trial" just a watered-down VM?
You get all the features, including the threat/URL stuff. It's the VM-100 license, but you're right about the hidden cap. It's 50Mbps throughput, which is fine for testing rules but not for any real load. Session limit is high though.
The 30 days only starts when you commit the license to the VM, so you can download it and wait to deploy. No auto-convert that I've seen, it just stops working.
Is it okay to run this in a lab VPC on AWS, or are there specific network requirements I should watch out for?