Thoughts on Barracudas?

[Michael Baird]

On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 13:51 +0100, Julian Field wrote:
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> Folks,
> 
> I have had some comments from a few people leaving the mailing list as 
> they are ditching their MailScanner setups and switching to Barracuda 
> applicances instead. They claim that things worked fine when they first 
> installed MailScanner, but gradually more and more spam is leaking 
> through, to the point where they have decided to abandon it.
> 
> 
> Here is what he said:
> 
> "I've tried Mailscanner on FreeBSD for almost one year. It worked great
> for about two months, then after every upgrade it began to let more and
> more spam through. I've tried everything to fix it and just got tired of
> my users complaining of increased spam.
> "It wasn't worth the headache. Your forums indicate that there are
> numerous people experienced the same problems I have encountered.
> "I have since purchased a Barracuda SPAM 200 firewall. This device has
> worked much better."
> 
> 
> 
> What is your opinion on the Barracuda appliance?
> How easy is it to use?
> Does it actually work?
> Can it survive the loads they say it can?
> 
> And, of course, how does it compare with MailScanner?
> 
> Please be open and honest, and as impartial as you can.
> 
> All of your thoughts are most welcome.

It is very similar to MailScanner in a canned package, with a nice role
based management interface. It uses many open source milters. The basic
difference is that they also provide "Energizer Updates" via
subscription, which essentially means ruleset upgrades and such are
pushed out from their servers. It is nice, if you don't want to mess
around. 

I'm still using MailScanner because I'm fine keeping spamassassin up to
date, and prefer to keep fine control of all the systems involved in our
email.

They have forums, and an online demo of the admin/user interface, which
will give you a good idea of what you can do with it.

Regards
Michael Baird