Want some examples why NSM is a piece of junk?

[tbehrens]

@cryptochrome: "While managing older devices (SRX) is incomplete."

I hear you. Yes, it is incomplete on NSM, and SPACE is not ready. I agree with Juniper's direction to keep NSM support incomplete, and direct all feature development effort into SPACE. This creates some discomfort in the short term, and is likely to bring better results in the medium term than splitting efforts between NSM and SPACE features.

We'll laugh about this discussion in a year's time.

[cryptochrome]

@tbehrens: I just had a 1,5 hour meeting with our Juniper reps and they gave us on overview of roadmaps for both Space SD and NSM. Looks like they are still putting a lot of effort into NSM, version 2012.1 will have a lot of new stuff and fixes (very welcome ones too). We also had a live demo of Space SD 11.4 and and overview of what will be added to it in 12.1 and 12.2 and I have to say I was very impressed with Space. There is hope. I'll be installing Space 12.1 as soon as it is available (probably around June).

[tbehrens]

Interesting. I stand corrected. I'll be curious to see what gets added to NSM.

[Jickfoo]

So.. Do you have Space installed, is it everything you dreamed it would be ? Im looking for an alternative because I am at the end of my rope with NSM. The only thing I like about it is Rule Groups which Im sure wont be available in Space. If I sound bitter its because I am.

[cryptochrome]

actually, rule groups are available in Space. If you don't need integrated logging, you can safely switch to Space (12.1+). It's far superior to NSM in every aspect.

[Jickfoo]

No logging ? Thats kind of important.

[cryptochrome]

yes, it is important. they have a separate logging product these days called "STRM". not an option for small/medium sized businesses that need an integrated solution, of course.

[Jickfoo]

sigh.. So all the people that use NSM for logging must scramble to get another logging solution in place ? Bogus.

[cryptochrome]

yes, right now that's how it is. you either build your own syslog machine, use something like the excellent SPLUNK, shell out money for STRM or you pray that Juniper will be wise enough to get logging built into Space. I was talking to a Juniper rep. a couple of weeks ago when they presented Space to me and they said that they still discuss this internally. So who knows. Maybe it'll be in there one day. Too bad Juniper are so secretive about their roadmap. The other option of course is to dump Juniper alltogether. There are other vendors our there who make excellent firewalls and actually care for customers that are smaller than telco carriers.

[Jickfoo]

Cant say I love Junos anyway. We loved the SSG family and ScreenOS. I dont get what Juniper is up to these days but I agree, I'm not crazy about where it seems to be going. We may go back to Checkpoint. It wasnt sexy but it had a great management and logging platform. Simple and straight forward. No drama like this NSM/Space nonsense.