Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls provides a wide range of security and connectivity features, including web filtering, NAC and SSL VPN and other features for remote access, as well as protection as edge devices and IoT security.
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Oracle SD-WAN (Talari)
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The vendor states that Oracle SD-WAN was created to solve the ongoing IT challenges network managers face every day—from expensive, sluggish, inflexible WANs to difficulties deploying new office WAN links and accessing cloud services. With Oracle SD-WAN, enterprises can benefit from internet economics, leverage high-bandwidth and inexpensive Internet connections, and safely migrate applications to the public cloud and SaaS at their own pace. The technology is based on Oracle's 2018 acquisition…
I would say a small business with a basic firewall and security needs would be a perfect fit for the Barracuda CloudGen firewall. I know that they soon end up leaving the NG models and are moving forward with the F series firewall. I think the F series is a much more difficult to manage device and doesn’t offer simplistic configuration or use and lacks cloud control so I don’t understand the move on Barracuda’s part to nix a great easy to manage the firewall. I do think that the NG line is maybe too simple for bigger businesses and would lack some main features that they would require.
Product has been around for a long time and the stability and features are excellent. Now that Oracle owns it, its long-term viability is both improved (given Oracle isn't going anywhere anytime soon), but all the layers of bureaucracy and auditing that Oracle is famous for comes along with it.
The management software is excellent. It make it much easier to manage the firewalls than some of the other vendors.
Watching real-time traffic is easy to do when trying to troubleshoot a users issues getting to a particular service.
Support from Barracuda has been excellent. We rate their phone and online remote support as being the best in the business.
We like the QoS and Traffic shaping of the NG Firewalls. They help is manage our limited bandwidth, so that business critical resources are available over lesser critical resources.
Integration with Active Directory makes it easy to identify users activities in logs.
Failsafe- ability to aggregate low cost link and increase enterprise WAN bandwidth and also provide safe failor over in case of link interruption, with almost zero drops. In a lab test for voice it works perfectly for voice.
Config Change without system interruption (change config and apply it during Maintenance windows).
Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.
I could go on and on about how good Barracuda's support really is. I have yet to have a problem they didn't help me fix and I always learn something when talking with them. The story that best describes my overall experience with Barracuda's support is this: When I first put in the xSeries they had a problem with a policy route. There was a bug in the code and in the one situation I was it, it just would not work. I went up the levels of support and they couldn't fix it. Well, next thing I know I am on the phone with 2 of the guys that programmed the thing and they work out the solution in no time and get me going. That is support. That is what I have come to expect from Barracuda. If the tech on the phone doesn't know the answer, they do not stop until they find it. Grant it, I also have to admit I do not call support with every problem, I try to work it out on my own first as that is how I learn best, so when I do call support it is going to be complicated.
Our Cisco firewall was always difficult to make any changes against. It had no user-friendly GUI interface. We were calling technical support most of the time whenever we needed to make any changes. The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has a GUI interface which we are looking forward to getting better acquainted with as we move off of our old Cisco. Of course, Barracuda's technical support is always there and is top notch!
While I haven't looked at Silverpeak in a long time and haven't used any of the other big players, this product is a dedicated SD-WAN solution, so no need to get a combination device, unless that's important. We will likely implement SD-WAN through our next firewall platform refresh as a backup to Talari.
We saved multiple thousands of dollars the first year out with the firewall in maintenance fees. We paid for the firewall and 3 years of service and still saved money.
The ease of management allows me to do my job more efficiently. I save a lot of time when doing my day to day job because I can get to my firewall virtually anywhere.
I feel a lot safer and my business more secure knowing that I have configured things the way they need to be and it was simple and not overly complicated.
