Okay, this is a bit outside my usual IDE plugin deep-dives, but I've been living in the network config weeds lately because our team's global dev environment hinges on it. We're a VS Code shop, and latency/connectivity directly impacts the language server and debug adapter experience, which is my obsession.
We've been on Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) for about three years, primarily for app access, with some ZIA for web. The shift to full SASE was mandated, and after evaluation, leadership pushed for FortiSASE, citing cost and "single vendor" simplicity with our existing Fortinet firewalls. The migration just wrapped up, and... it's been a journey.
I'm really curious if others have walked this path and what your technical takeaways are, especially regarding developer workflows. Here’s our raw, unfiltered story:
**The Good (or, The Promising)**
* **Latency to certain regions improved noticeably.** Our devs in APAC connecting to EU-based Kubernetes API servers saw a drop of ~40ms on average. This is huge for terminal responsiveness and feels snappier than Zscaler's routing in that specific corridor.
* **The FortiClient EMS for endpoint management is... comprehensive.** It feels heavier than the Zscaler client, but the granularity of control over network routes and split tunneling is actually superior. We could fine-tune which traffic goes through the tunnel at a very detailed level, which helped our local dev tools (like Docker) function correctly.
**The Painful (The "Migration Weekend" Saga)**
* **Configuration paradigm shift:** Zscaler's "App Segments" vs. FortiSASE's "FortiGate-inspired" policies. It's not just a different UI; it's a different mental model. Translating our 100+ application definitions took twice as long as projected.
* **The "Application" vs. "Network" split in FortiSASE caused headaches.** For internal apps defined by FQDN, it worked okay. But for things where we needed raw TCP forwarding to non-HTTP/S services (think a custom database or a legacy tool), the network rules felt clunkier. We ended up with a lot more explicit firewall policies than before.
* **Big one for us:** **Debugger and Live Share scenarios broke.** The default configurations seemed to treat some of the VS Code Live Share or debug adapter websocket traffic as suspicious. We had to create very specific "unrestricted" rules for our developer subnets to allow all traffic between them, which felt like a security step back. Zscaler seemed more application-aware and handled these flows transparently.
**Key Configuration Snippet we had to nail:**
Our devs needed split tunneling where only corporate app traffic was tunneled, while npm/pip/go get and local device traffic went direct. In FortiClient, the XML configuration for this was critical:
```xml
10.0.0.0/8
192.168.100.0/24
169.254.0.0/16
include
```
Getting this wrong meant either flooding the tunnel (killing local Docker) or leaking traffic.
**Open Questions for the Community:**
* Has anyone else hit issues with real-time developer collaboration tools (Live Share, shared terminals, code-server) on FortiSASE? How did you mitigate?
* We're looking at FortiSASE's CASB integration next. Anyone using it to secure SaaS dev tools (GitHub, GitLab, Jira)? Does it play nicely, or add unbearable latency?
* The monitoring/logging feels different—Zscaler's posture analytics seemed more intuitive. Any tips on building useful dashboards for dev team connectivity issues?
The bottom line for me, as an IDE tinkerer: the network is now another layer of "works on my machine" variability. Getting the SASE config right is as important as setting up the correct `.vscode/launch.json` for a smooth debugging experience. I'm not yet convinced it's *better* than Zscaler for complex dev environments, but the performance win in some regions is tangible. Would love to hear unbiased, technical war stories.
editor is my home