Columbia University’s Advanced Computing Research Support (ARCS) has an estimated 300 users across
five local email domains. The organization has a set of equipment and support separate from the rest of
the university’s campus. ARCS had an Exchange Server directly on the Internet with no anti-spam solution
in place. Over the years, increasing amounts of spam negatively impacted productivity and the speed of
Microsoft Exchange.
Searching for a solution to the organization’s
mounting problem, Paul Glick, Technical Engineer,
first heard about Barracuda Networks from
advertisements in magazines, on the radio, and
airport billboards. “Barracuda Networks’ name was
everywhere I turned, so I knew they were a stable
company, and we should take a look,” explained
Glick.
The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall solution took
the load off the exchange server allowing for
email delivery to be more efficient. Glick decided
to purchase two Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall
400s for high availability. He continued, “I’m glad I
did because the solutions are cost-effective and the
company provides incredible support.”
Building High Availability with the Barracuda Load Balancer
Within the first month the two Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls were blocking about 90% of the group’s
overall mail and labeling it as spam, saving a considerable amount of bandwidth. After six months of
having the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls in place, Glick was so pleased with the results he decided to
look at two Barracuda Load Balancers to ensure redundancy.
Impressed, Glick deployed two Barracuda 440 Load Balancers concurrent with his two Barracuda 400 Spam
& Virus Firewalls integrating the pairs of appliances for redundancy reasons, ensuring high availability fail
over in case of an appliance failure or firmware upgrades. If either of the appliances fail, the additional
pair detects the failure before it becomes a threat to the overall functionality of the servers. By pairing
the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall and Load Balancer, the result is that the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol) traffic becomes highly available and increases the performance of the group’s mail servers.
“Barracuda Load Balancers share a configuration, so if one goes down the other one will fail over, ensuring
continuity throughout my network making them extremely easy to manage,” Glick explained.
The Barracuda Load Balancers also help increase the organization’s server efficiency. Glick has multiple
servers to maintain and typically puts a few of the servers on maintenance mode allowing them to manage and run multiple servers at one time. This provides less noticeable maintenance periods for Glick and his
team, where they can put a server into “maintenance mode” and allow the connections to the server to
dissipate.. The Barracuda Load Balancers provide the flexibility Glick needs to be able take servers offline,
upgrade them, and bring them back online without having to make an announcement.
Barracuda Networks Reliable Solutions Partner
Although Glick is yet to encounter a time where one of the servers has experienced a failure, he is familiar
with the reliability of Barracuda Networks support team. “The support Barracuda provides is invaluable,”
explained Glick. “Although I haven’t had many issues with our products that required support, I am
confident whenever there is an issue, and it will be fixed immediately. I wish we had the support Barracuda
provides we had for some of our other (vendor) products.”
Glick also pointed out that the cost of two Barracuda Load Balancers is often less than the price of a
support contract alone with another vendor, further expressing his contentment with Barracuda Networks’
support team.
Conclusion
It’s been about four years since Glick first deployed a Barracuda Networks solution, and he does not
imagine a foreseeable future without Barracuda Networks’ appliances. “Our Barracuda products, without
question do exactly what they are supposed to do. I haven’t had any issues with them so far and the user
community is unaware of their operation; this is a good thing!” Impressed Glick continued, “No one ever
says ‘Wow, everything is working again today’” but ultimately he is satisfied with his Barracuda Networks
solutions and how they have eased the IT burden in his organization.
About Barracuda Networks Inc.
Barracuda Networks Inc. combines premises-based gateways and software, cloud services, and
sophisticated remote support to deliver comprehensive security, networking and storage solutions. The
company’s expansive product portfolio includes offerings for protection against email, web and IM threats
as well as products that improve application delivery and network access, message archiving, backup and
data protection.
Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L’Oreal, and Europcar are among the more than 150,000
organizations protecting their IT infrastructures with Barracuda Networks’ range of affordable, easy-todeploy
and manage solutions. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its international headquarters in
Campbell, California.
