Barracuda dying need replacement

Uncle Toxie

Uncle Toxie

Gawd
Joined
Aug 22, 2004
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513
Some of you may have seen me bemoan my slow as hell Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 here before. I finally got in touch with the support folks and it runs a little better now buuuuuut, now it seem that the hard drive in the device is failing.

They have offered to replace it for $1500 and our energizer subscription would just roll over to the replacement device. I have run some reports and it is blocking an average of 18K messages a day but I still get complaints of a lot of junk coming in.

My question to you all is, would you go for the replacement device or go with another solution entirely? We have a squirrel mail/hmail setup (that I also loathe) and have had my eye on SmarterMail wich has an add on spam filter option. I've never used it so I don't know that it would do a better job.

The big boss here is a grumpy older gentleman and if I try making recommendations without enough information I will be crucified so I want to gather a few alternatives to compare and possible get some first hand accounts of how they perform. If anyone here has a suggestion I would be glad to hear it!

Thanks!
 
You already have the barracuda, and apparently have been happy with it up until now, since you didn't already replace it. The cost of purchasing and implementing a new device is probably greater than $1500, by the time you get done with any support issues and end user issues. So stick with what you have.

You might also investigate their cloud based spam blocking and/or virtual machine based product. Both of which will avoid any hardware related failures in the future.

Barracuda also has a program where if you've been paying your instant replacement fees for 4 years, without having actually gotten a replacement hardware, they'll get you a brand new (faster) box for free.

https://www.barracudanetworks.com/docs/Datasheets/Barracuda_Hardware_Refresh_Program_DS_US.pdf
 
They never paid for the replacement program so it's gonna cost regardless. I'm leaning towards going with the replacement but the owner will have kittens if I don't come to him with a few options.

I would really love to just migrate the whole mess to Google Apps, but at $50 an address there is no way that's happening.
 
I'd go with a Wathcguard XCS170/370 depending on message load. Ironport is good, but expensive and that much better to justify it, IMO.
 
I have both a watchguard XTM520 with their spamscreen enabled as well as a Barracuda 300.

In my opinion hands down the Barracuda is the best device we've ever owned at our org. We put it in about 7 years ago and only paid for the energize subscription. Little more than 2 years ago they replaced our box with newer hardware for free because of the age of the old one.

I've considered what I would do if our Barracuda died and honestly, my first reaction would be to go with the Barracuda virtual appliance for VMware so that I'd never have to worry about upgrades again of the physical hardware.

https://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/vm_overview.php

Not sure if a virtual appliance is an option for you or not but I'm throwing it out there.
 
Note that there's a difference between the XCS and XTM. The XCS is a dedicated anti-spam appliance, whilst the XTM is a multi purpose firewall, and I've yet to see one that does a good job at filtering spam :(
 
I have three ideas. I have done all of them before with the Barracuda 300

1. Take the hard drive out, image it to another IDE drive (if you can) and put that new hard drive back in the Barracuda!

2. Image the drive to another computer and run the Barracuda software on an old workstation. You probably have something like an Athlon 1400 in the Barracuda so if you run it on a Pentium 4 or old Core Duo it will be much faster!

3. Image the drive and run it on VMware free version

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How many mailboxes are you filtering for? Personally I'm a big fan of cloud spam filters like Postini or Baracuda's service. Postini costs $12 a year per mailbox so the pricing isn't too bad depending on the amount of mailboxes you need covered.

As for Watchguard products, I'd rather punch myself in the crotch. I'm just not a fan of them I guess.
 
marley1 said:
Who says
Click to expand...

Google is eol'ing postini as it exists today and rolling it.into their business services.

I recently looked at Proofpoint as a Postini replacement and liked what I saw. Not sure of the price but they have an extensive feature list and offer the services as hosted, appliance and vm.
 
MrGoat said:
How many mailboxes are you filtering for?
Click to expand...

this is the important one. If you host very few mailboxes, then a hosted solution is a good idea. If you're like us, and host thousands of mailboxes, having an appliance is far cheaper. We use a Barracuda 600.
 
We have around 450ish boxes right now. After I spoke with Barracuda support and we made it where I can access the interface I was able to run some reports. It filters, on average, about 20 thousand messages a day.

I'm really leaning towards trying to image a new hard drive or just making a VM. The only thing I was concerned with was them getting pissy and cutting us off because we aren't using an "official" device.
 
We are also on postini and looking for replacements. So far we are leaning to barracuda due to cost and feature set.

Proofpoint is about 20 a user per year...so with 1500 users that's 30k a year......the barracuda will cost us about 6k per year. Pretty much a no brainer......
 
Uncle Toxie said:
I'm really leaning towards trying to image a new hard drive or just making a VM. The only thing I was concerned with was them getting pissy and cutting us off because we aren't using an "official" device.
Click to expand...

When I did it, the updates etc all still ran fine
 
Eickst said:
We are also on postini and looking for replacements. So far we are leaning to barracuda due to cost and feature set.

Proofpoint is about 20 a user per year...so with 1500 users that's 30k a year......the barracuda will cost us about 6k per year. Pretty much a no brainer......
Click to expand...

Ugh, I still havent pursued pricing, but if that's what it costs then forget it. The barracuda model 600 would suit us and has web continuity if the appliance bites it.
 
Ehren8879 said:
Ugh, I still havent pursued pricing, but if that's what it costs then forget it. The barracuda model 600 would suit us and has web continuity if the appliance bites it.
Click to expand...

Yep we are looking at the 600 also
 
Uncle Toxie said:
We have around 450ish boxes right now. After I spoke with Barracuda support and we made it where I can access the interface I was able to run some reports. It filters, on average, about 20 thousand messages a day.

I'm really leaning towards trying to image a new hard drive or just making a VM. The only thing I was concerned with was them getting pissy and cutting us off because we aren't using an "official" device.
Click to expand...

I was quoted $8 per user per year from Barracuda for their Hosted service.

Google is $12 per user per year

Forefront is about $20 per user per year..

SpamHero is by far the cheapest thing out there, but you would have to pay per user for individual quarantine boxes..
you get 100,000 messages per month.
You are going thorugh 6x that much though. so you would really spend $40-50 a month for spamhero.. but it could, in theory cover you. but you have enough mailboxes that you need your own appliance. no way around it.
 
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