Thoughts on Barracudas?

[Julian Field]

Michael H. Martel wrote:
> --On August 21, 2006 1:51:13 PM +0100 Julian Field 
> <MailScanner at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> What is your opinion on the Barracuda appliance?
>
> I don't like it.  I was forced into it by Management.  They were wowed 
> by the graphical front end that allowed individual users to manage 
> their own white and black lists.  I think that the biggest thing it's 
> got going for it is the graphical interface.  Remove that and it's not 
> that good.
MailWatch provides this very well.
And if you want an easy-to-install package of everything you need, then 
DefenderMX from Fort  Systems Ltd (www.fsl.com) will do it for you. And 
it's cheaper than Barracuda too.
>
>> How easy is it to use?
>
> Easy to use, but not very flexible.  You can't edit scores for rules, 
> and a lot of the settings are for the entire box and not per domain.
>
>> Does it actually work?
>
> Yes, it does.
>
>> Can it survive the loads they say it can?
>
> Don't know.  We push about 40k messages a day through it in the 
> summer, and about 120k messages a day once classes start (today!).  I 
> don't know what it's rated for.  We're using a model 600.
>
>> And, of course, how does it compare with MailScanner?
>
> The only thing that it does better than my MailScanner setup, IMHO, is 
> that it blocks at the SMTP level based on black lists.  I just haven't 
> bothered to enable the checks in Sendmail to do this myself. :)
We can do that using Sendmail's accss db.
>
> I haven't found anything that the Barracuda does that I can't do in 
> MailScanner.  Other than the GUI.
Agreed. Take a look at MailWatch.

-- 
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store

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