The Dell SonicWALL TZ is an affordable, yet high-performing, line of enterprise-level firewalls designed for small and medium-sized businesses, remote and branch offices, and retail point-of-sale locations. SonicWALL TZ series offer these use cases an abundance of protection features as well as advanced security services that leverage on-box and cloud-based anti-malware, antispyware, intrusion prevention system, and URL filtering. Dell’s new line of firewalls are also specced to handle encrypted attacks as it is equipped with the processing punch needed to inspect encrypted SSL connections against the most recent threats. 

For this review, we will be looking at the TZ500, which is one of the models Dell targets towards SMB buyers. SonicWALL, which was acquired by Dell back in 2012, has been a market leader in advanced network security, secure remote access, email security for quite some time now, so their newest firewall is a welcomed addition to the StorageReview lab. Compared to the top offering TZ600 model, it features slightly lower throughput, less 1 GbE Copper interfaces (8 vs. 10), and doesn’t have a rear expansion slot. That being said, it certainly offers enough enterprise-grade protection and performance to halt cyberattacks all the while helping to expend to control of your company’s network. The SonicWALL TZ series also features Dell’s Global Management System (GMS), which allows administrators to deploy and manage SonicWALL TZ series firewalls from a single system at the central office.

The SonicWALL TZ500 comes equipped with optional integrated 802.11ac wireless, IPSec and SSL VPN, failover through integrated 3G/4G support, load balancing and network segmentation, all of which combine advanced networking features with advanced security to boast a pretty impressive package.