Item: Barracuda Load Balancer ADC
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We purchased the load balancer for use with an new web app initially. But, we use is for many other servers too. Our goal was to reduce downtime if a server failed and also balance the load across servers so one server would not be over tasked, thus increasing performance. We also wanted it so that we could do maintenance, patches, and updates on one server and still maintain access to services. It is being used organization wide.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Provide High Availability.
Reduce downtime due to hardware or software failure.
Allow for maintenance periods for IT without affecting end users access.
Increase performance of services by distributing the load across more than one server.

Cons

We also use the load balancer as a redirect server for web applications. When these are set up they show a red x like the services are down. I would like for them to have a setting made in future firmware to simply remove the status on redirects.
I would also like for them to do on-demand online training for the load balancer like they already offer for free on many of their products.

Return on Investment

Positive impact: We can now do server maintenance without disrupting services to the end users.
Positive impact: It keeps our servers from getting overloaded during peak utilization times.
Positive impact: If we have one server fail the load is shifted to the server that is up to reduce downtime.

Alternatives Considered

We chose Barracuda because we already have other products of theirs. And primarily for the support. Their support is the best we have come across. They help you every step form setup to use to troubleshooting.