I've worked with a couple of Barracudas that worked very well, especially for people who are not technical. As far as updates, a Barracuda has three different update mechanisms. There are virus def and spam def updates which can be set to automatically update either hourly or daily, and then there are 'firmware' updates, which the barracuda will notify the admin of by email, as applying the update requires a reboot.
Eric -----Original Message----- From: Cris Fuhrman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 10:08 AM To: users@spamassassin.apache.org Subject: Re: Barracuda's Spam firewall On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 09:43:32 -0500 (EST), Tom Gwilt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The response was along the lines of "not available at this time, and > it would cost you tens of thousands of dollars to implement with > existing hardware, etc". > > OK - so I found a Dell 1600SC, put FreeBSD, Postfix, and SpamAssassin > on it, and forwarded all outbound SMTP traffic from our main MX to that box. > Total cost - less than $2000. Total spam stopped since implementation > - over 500,000 messages. Feeling of relief - priceless. I'm not defending Barracuda, but to be fair with your cost comparison, you need to say how much of your time you spent, including all the up-to-date security patches, etc. I think it makes a big difference, especially when you're talking about all three items (OS, Postfix, SpamAssassin). Also, does anyone know if Barracuda boxes "update themselves" with respect to OS security? The "set it and forget it" mentality is dangerous for any device. A lot of IIS web servers were set up using this thought process. The data sheet I found on their web site doesn't mention anything about software updates. Cris -- Help reduce spam by "educating" lax, zombie-hosting ISPs: http://pages.infinit.net/filmore/educateYourISP.htm
