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

Overall Satisfaction with Barracuda Load Balancer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We implemented the Barracuda Load Balancer to provide redundant load balancing in our exchange environment. We currently have 3 exchange servers in a DAG setup. Most of our employees use Outlook Web Access to access their email externally so we wanted to ensure high uptime and good performance across the board.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Excellent Load Balancing.
Flexible configuration - It's very simple to configure and powerful enough to handle many more websites than just our exchange site.
Continuously updated - Barracuda makes fairly frequent updates to address issues and improve features.

Cons

The interface for identifying the physical ports is not as intuitive as it could be. It can take physical documentation to make sense of it when you have not worked on it for some time.
Renewals are a bit on the pricey side. With Barracuda you generally have two renewals. One for the updates and one for Instant Replacement which for something like this you really want to have.

Return on Investment

It has allowed us to maintain a very high level of uptime.
It has allowed us to perform server updates without the downtime of services.
It has provided a consistent user experience by properly balancing service loads across servers.

Support Rating

Barracuda, in general, has very responsive and high-quality support. It's fantastic to be able to get someone on the phone quickly when you need help or a fast call back. With instant replacement, you can feel assured that in the case of a complete failure, you will have a new unit with configuration intact within a day or two. One of the best for support in my experience.

Key Insights

Do you think Barracuda Load Balancer ADC delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Barracuda Load Balancer ADC's feature set?

Yes

Did Barracuda Load Balancer ADC live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Barracuda Load Balancer ADC go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Barracuda Load Balancer ADC again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Trend Micro ServerProtect, Fortinet FortiGate

Likelihood to Recommend

For an important high availability website such as for email, this is a great solution. However, it does in a way, create it's own single point of failure in that if it goes down all the web servers it services are no longer available but there are ways around that rather than just spending more on a secondary unit. There are probably less expensive units or DNS methods you could use for less critical web sites you are trying to maintain. But for exchange and multiple website support with excellent reliability and support, this is a good solution.

Comments

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Full Featured Load Balancer with Excellent Support