IT G.
Challenging Experience with Sophos Support for HA and Hardware Issues
Sophos' support is TERRIBLE, outside of the obvious and ordinary issues. We had an HA issue with our Sophos XG Firewalls that started in May of 2023; after a month of being bounced around support centers around the globe due to time difference, we were finally escalated to development which diagnosed the issue as a software bug. It took development until August to devise a solution, leaving us without a working HA until August 2023. We attempted to implement the bug fix as instructed in August but discovered a hardware failure of the standby FW. A replacement was sent, and another attempt to install it was made in November. When we attempted to install the patch this time, the support rep found the replacement device was once again faulty and required to be replaced. Unfortunately for us, this time, we did not have licensed replacement services, and we had to wait three weeks to process an order for this service. On the day we received the replacement, the primary license holder appliance that was still functioning also crashed. This left us with a FULL OUTAGE! We recovered from a backup to the replacement we had just received but ran into a licensing issue, which took Sophos support 3 weeks to understand and resolve. Apparently, transferring a license is very complex and requires 3 levels of support. At this point, Sophos support didn't see a need for the patch on our device because we performed a full restore. As it stands, in February 2024, we were about to test the HA failover, but in the prechecks, we discovered that the firewall had disconnected from Sophos Central and would not reconnect. The status of the HA is listed as healthy, but the registration link to Sophos central on the device lists a status of "Auxiliary device status: Couldn't get the registration details. The device is offline." Online forums are stating it might be another hardware failure, but support is once again researching. Overall, it's been a nightmare! We are 9 months into an issue with multiple hardware failures. Support takes 24 hours to respond, no matter how severe the problem is. Support is mainly in India or other regions, never in the US. They call you back for critical issues but are unable to resolve them; they just transfer you to another team or tell you that they will get back to you in 24-48 hours. If you don't experience an issue, the product works well and is "easy" to navigate and set up. Overall, avoid Sophos due to the lack of enterprise-grade technical support.




