Winner: Network Products Guide 2012 Awards

May 16th, 2012

By Oliver Wai, Product Marketing Manager

Last week, I had the honor of attending the 7th Annual Hot Companies & Best Products Awards event in Las Vegas where we won two awards. We were extremely pleased that Network Products Guide chose the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Vx and the Barracuda Web Filter as the Best 2012 solutions for key IT challenges:

Best IT Products & Services for Education – Barracuda Web Filter

Barracuda has always been strong in the Education market and we’ve been working closely with our customers to design solutions to fit their unique challenges. Together we have developed new innovative features and capabilities such as:

  • YouTube for Schools Integration which gives teachers the ability to use a great selection of educational videos, while blocking offensive, inappropriate, or just plain wasteful YouTube content.
  • Social Media Regulation capabilities that allow teachers or administrators to granularly control and archive social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
  • Barracuda Safe Browser which allows administrators to ensure security on iPads or Android tablets regardless of where students are using them.

Best Email, Security & Management Award – Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Vx

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall has been a mainstay and core product of Barracuda’s security portfolio since we founded our company. As the IDC Content Security volume leader, Barracuda Networks has invested heavily in expanding the capabilities of our flagship product. These include:

  • Data Loss Prevention capabilities that ensures no confidential information is leaked out of the organization.
  • Email Encryption where outbound email is encrypted by the Barracuda Message Center, a cloud-based portal that solves the problem of key exchange. Administrators can set policies at the organizations level and users can self-select email messages using an Outlook plug-in.
  • Cloud Protection Layer (CPL) that pre-filters spam before it comes into your network. The CPL also acts as a Business Continuity solution by providing email accessibility in the cloud even when your network is down.
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In This Corner, a Massive Backup Server (New Model 1090)

May 8th, 2012

By Andy Jensen, Product Manager

Today, Barracuda Networks released the new model 1090 Backup Server.  Businesses  of all sizes are looking for integrated solutions to protect servers and applications in both physical and virtual environments.  The 1090 brings our simple approach to end-to-end backup to big places.

Honestly, it is a truly massive machine containing 36 x 3 TB drives.  If you watched the video posted along-side this blog entry, you saw us joking around about how heavy it is.  Seriously, when you get yours, make sure you have a few burly guys to help lift it into the rack because it weighs in at just over 130 lbs!

After the RAID 60 formatting, it stores nearly 90 TB of data.  The same simple Barracuda Backup sizing guideline applies to the 1090 as the other models.  It is targeted for customers looking to protect 45-50 terabytes of uncompressed primary data sources.  With its full capacity, the 1090 provides ample room for current backups, retention history and future growth in such a scenario.

Not only is this now the largest Barracuda Backup Server available, it is also the fastest. It boasts double the processing power (32 cores!) and double the memory of the model 990.  The model 1090 also has a pair of large solid state drives (SSDs) in the platform.  These mirrored drives run the database that stores the recipes for deduplicating and then reconstituting your data.  Tracking that metadata on these speedy SSDs significantly reduces the i/o load for backup operations and accelerates your backup times.

Really, the story here is very similar to when we introduced the hit model 990 backup server. We have talked to a number of customers with larger data environments where implementing a single 1090 makes more sense than distributing backup operations across multiple backup appliances. We are thrilled to bring our simple end-to-end backup solution to even bigger environments with the new model 1090.

For more information, please read the press release. For questions about the Barracuda Backup Service, please visit http://www.barracuda.com/backup or call Barracuda Networks for a free 30-day evaluation at 1-888-ANTI-SPAM or 1-408-342-5400.

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Project Barracuda: Web Application Firewall

May 4th, 2012

By Oliver Wai, Product Marketing Manager

Check out the new Project Barracuda video on the Barracuda Web Application Firewall. Tom Lockhart, IT Director from the Hasting & Prince Edward Counties Health Unit, talks about his experiences using the Barracuda Web Application Firewall to secure their web applications that handle critical clinical and health information.

The Hasting & Prince Edward County experience is common to many of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall customers. With its industry best ease of use and security capabilities, thousands of satisfied customers worldwide use the Barracuda Firewall to secure their Web Application, meet compliance requirements and prevent the loss of sensitive data.

To learn more about how the Barracuda Web Application Firewall can protect your applications, go to: http://www.barracuda.com/waf.

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Virtual Machine Backup with the Barracuda Backup Service

April 12th, 2012

Posted by: Andy Jensen, product manager

As a member of the Product Management team at Barracuda Networks, I get to spend some of my time on the road meeting our partners and assisting them with co-sponsored events.  In February, I did four of the dates on Barracuda’s Velocity Tour and was able to present Barracuda Backup to over 200 people during that trip.  One of the great things about getting in front of so many potential customers is that we get a bunch of direct feedback about our products, what customers like, and what they would like to see in the future.

Of course, we always like to go prepared with a few seed questions to get people thinking.  One of the questions I asked on this last trip was about Virtualization.

Andy:  “How many of you have introduced virtualization to your environment or plan to in the future?”

All hands go up.

Andy:  “How many of you have no physical servers remaining in your environment?”

All hands go down.

Of the 200 people I asked this question, one hand did remain in air indicating his entire environment had been virtualized.  The rest had physical servers that they needed to back up.  This kind of evidence confirms our suspicion that the vast majority of the market wants to, or needs to, address both physical and virtual backups.  Customers will be served best by one product that can protect both physical and virtual environments rather than by piecemealing a solution together.


Introducing Barracuda Backup Server v4.2 with VMware Support

Barracuda Backup has supported Microsoft Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008 r2 since releasing the Barracuda Backup Agent in firmware version 3.0.  Until now, we have asked customers who want to backup VMware sources to do so the same way they back up their physical machines.  Typically this would involve installing the agent on each guest machine.  While this approach provides granular backups of guest machines, it does not provide a comprehensive way to back up an ESX/ESXi virtual machine image.

With firmware version 4.2 of the Barracuda Backup Server  now available, we introduce VMware host support which will allow backup and restore of all guest VM’s.  The Backup Server communicates through the vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP) and exposes all sources on a vSphere host for backup. Additionally, multiple vSphere hosts can be accessed through the vCenter Server product.  The solution currently requires at a minimum access to the vSphere Data Protection API which is included with the VMware Essentials Plus license.

Supported VMware Product Versions:

VMware ESX 4.0.x, 4.1.x

VMware ESXi 4.0.x , 4.1.x (embedded or installable)

VMware ESXi 5.0.x

VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x, 4.1.x, 5.0.x

This upgrade will give our customers a quicker and more efficient way to recover their virtual servers, and will provide deduplicated images, which can be transferred offsite for comprehensive disaster recovery.

For questions about the Barracuda Backup Service, please visit http://www.barracuda.com/backup or call Barracuda Networks for a free 30-day evaluation at 1-888-ANTI-SPAM or 1-408-342-5400.

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Barracuda Load Balancer 4.1 firmware introduces IPv6 and Call-id persistence for SIP

March 30th, 2012

by Anshuman Singh, Product Manager

Barracuda Load Balancer firmware version 4.1 introduces some very important capabilities and enhancements. These additions include important capabilities such as IPv6 support,  and call id based persistence for SIP traffic, among many other things.

Support for IPv6

Barracuda Load Balancers now support IPv6. With the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses many ISPs, Government agencies and other organizations, have started rolling out services on IPv6 address spaces. While organizations are adopting IPv6 they cannot let go of their IPv4 set up yet, so they are looking for solutions that can operate in IPv4 and IPv6 environments.

With IPv6 enhancements the Barracuda Load Balancer supports various options and approaches that a customer may want to take.

Client to Load Balancer Load Balancer to Server Use Case
IPv4 IPv4 This is how all the Load Balancer units are normally deployed today.
IPv4 IPv6 This option can be utilized by organizations that want to make their internal network IPv6 ready before they make it available to the external world.
IPv6 IPv4 This option is available for organizations that want to make services available on IPv6 but do not want to change their internal network to IPv6  due to the large scale network changes.
IPv6 IPv6 This option is for organizations that have completely migrated over to IPv6 address space

Any combination of the services can be deployed on the same Barracuda Load Balancer.

Call id persistence for SIP traffic

IP Telephony has grown phenomenally in last few years and has received wide spread adoption. As the organizations deploy these IP Telephony solutions they are looking for deployments that will support the growth of their organizations.

The Barracuda Load Balancer has supported SIP load balancing for a while but in firmware release4.1 we introduce call-id based persistence which makes deployments easier, even in NAT’ed environments.

The Barracuda Load Balancer can now look into the SIP headers and use the call-id header to persist the SIP datagrams to the correct server.

Server Name Indicator support

Server Name Indicator (SNI) is yet another attempt by the internet community to maximize the utilization of the limited number of IPv4 addresses that are available. Normally, if you were to set up a couple of HTTPS websites you would need an IP address for each Web site or use the more expensive multi domain certificates that would have entries for each of your domains. There are times when using a multi domain certificate is not possible and you somehow want to use multiple certificates on the same IP. This is possible with SNI set up which is now supported on the Barracuda Load Balancer.

Using SNI successfully requires some support from the browsers and not all browsers support it. Read the details in our pervious blog on the subject by clicking here .

User interface enhancements

As we continue to add capabilities to the Barracuda Load Balancer it is natural that our user interface will have to change to provide a way to do various operations in an easy to use manner. Our customers appreciate the ease of use in setting the configuration on the Barracuda Load Balancer. We want to continue to support what our customers really love about our product while we provide enhancements that continue to make complicated features easier to use. With this in mind, we have added an ‘Advanced View’ button to the service creation module. You can click on ‘Advanced View’ and see more configuration items that you may need when configuring an IPv6 service or additional capabilities.

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Government Agencies: Budget Conscious Solutions to Meet New Email Archiving / Retention Requirements

March 21st, 2012

Posted by:  Aseem Asthana and Kevin Sheu

New government retention policies continue to increase as agencies mandate new requirements.  Most recently, the South Carolina Office of the Governor announced a new records retention policy that encompasses the treatment and retention of emails (News Announcement | New Retention Policy).

This new policy serves as an example of a scenario where the Barracuda Message Archiver can  effortlessly support additions and changes to government email retention policies.  In this case, like most archiving scenarios, new policies should not require significant changes to the commitment of IT resources and email / network architecture, nor should it significantly alter IT budgets.  We understand that State, Local, and Educational organizations should be focused on their day-to-day responsibilities rather than compliance to new requirements.

The Barracuda Message Archiver will seamlessly sit to the side of the email server and collect all of an organization’s emails with minimal day-to-day management.  The length of time emails are retained can then be customized to meet current and new requirements quickly and simply.  The solution is deployable within an hour, and archiving with Barracuda Networks does not require per-user fees leaving budgets well protected.

For questions about the Barracuda Message Archiver, please visit http://www.barracuda.com/archiver or call Barracuda Networks for a free 30-day evaluation at 1-888-ANTI-SPAM or 1-408-342-5400.

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Barracuda Backup Service v. 4.1 – Continuous Data Protection

March 14th, 2012

Posted by: Andy Jensen, product manager

As we roll out of Barracuda Backup Service v. 4.1 to our customer base, I’d like to discuss some of the advantages offered by features new to this release.  In my last post, I discussed Bare Metal Recovery.  Today I’ll cover our use of USN Journaling to provide Continuous Data Protection.

The Barracuda Backup Service has included change detection intelligence since the inception of the product.  Change detection is critical because it is minimizes resources needed to perform a backup.  A typical image-based backup solution sees all data on a volume as a single chunk.  Each time a backup runs, a snapshot is created, pulled across the network, and written to disk.  Depending on the solution, that data may then be deduplicated and/or compressed after it has been stored.  The Barracuda Backup approach is different. It is file based rather than image based and it only backs up data that it has not seen previously or data that has changed since last time a backup ran.  After the initial backup, rather than transferring all the data on a volume each time a backup runs, the Barracuda Backup server only has to move the incremental changes to your data set.  File data is then deduplicated before it is written to the backup server.  This shortens backup windows, reduces load on LAN resources, and reduces the amount of hard drive space needed to store backup data.

Some History

Early versions of the Barracuda Backup Service controlled this process from the server itself.  When a backup ran, the Backup server would communicate with the target device, remotely walking the file system looking for changed data, and requesting anything that had changed.  This procedure was good in fairly standard environments, but when a customer had an unusually large number of files, there was a lot of overhead involved in touching each file across their network to check for changes.  This meant backup windows remained lengthy even if not a lot of data had changed.

When we introduced the Barracuda Backup Agent software for Microsoft Windows, we made a change to speed up this process.  The backup agent included a database that kept track of what had been sent to the backup server.  By keeping track of changes on the server that was being backed up, we eliminated the need walk the file system from across the LAN (All of those queries are local); but that was not quite enough.  On servers with large numbers of files, sometimes millions of small files, backup windows were still unnecessarily long due to the need to walk the file system before backing up data.  Even with the local windows server doing all the work, touching every one of millions of files can be a lengthy process.

The Solution

The solution we have deployed in Barracuda Backup Service v. 4.1 takes advantage of a feature in Windows called the USN (Update Sequence Number) Journal.  Quite simply, it is a log of changes that have been made on the server being backed up.  Once the initial backup runs, the Agent can get information about files that have been changed, modified, or deleted from the record kept in the journal.  By monitoring those changes in a log, it isn’t necessary to check every file when a backup runs, it is only necessary to address what has changed.  This dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to perform backups and reduces the overall load on the server being backed up.  Especially in those scenarios where millions of files need to be protected, tracking changes as they occur over time is far less system intensive than checking every file for changes when a backup runs.

The combination of extraordinarily short backup windows and minimal use of system resources means that customers can back up file system data quite frequently.  This technology is the basis for what is called continuous data protection or CDP.  Continuous data protection allows customers to run backups during the day while their data is changing.  Barracuda customers leveraging this new feature have found value in the ability to complete backups of their critical file system data as often as every 15 minutes.

We are very excited about offering this technology that is going to have a tremendous impact and reduce backup windows for all of our customers.

Barracuda Backup Service v 4.1 is available immediately to all customers. For more details on the Barracuda Backup Service please visit: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/backup_overview.php or call 1-888-ANTI-SPAM to speak to one of our specialists.

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Barracuda NG Firewall 5.2.3 firmware released

March 14th, 2012

Posted by: Oliver Braekow, product manager

The Barracuda NG Firewall 5.2.3 firmware release includes a number of new features requested by customers. This blog includes a summary of the key changes included in 5.2.3.

GUI simplification and renaming to better match industry standards:

Large components of the Barracuda NG Firewall interface were recently revised to be more intuitive, allowing faster set up of a single firewall unit, and better reflecting industry naming standards. Existing customers, already familiar with the previous interface, will still easily find their way around the intuitive interface. We have provided a complete list of changes in the release notes starting on page 34. This list should help new customers to get up and running faster. The Barracuda NG Firewall Migration and Release Notes 5.2.3 are available from www.barracuda.com/doc

iOS Mobile device VPN Support

The Barracuda NG Firewall now also supports the IPsec XAUTH authentication standard which is used by the built-in IPSec VPN client for iOS mobile devices. This allows customers to easily create IPSec VPN tunnels between Barracuda NG Firewalls and mobile devices such as iPads or iPhones. For details please see the chapter entitled “How to Configure IPsec Client to Site Access with iOS Devices” in the Barracuda NG Firewall Administrator’s Guide 5.2.3 page 573 on www.barracuda.com/doc

IPFIX Support

Firmware release 5.2.3 introduces IPFIX streaming support (Internet Protocol Flow Information Export) to all Firewall Audit logs and HTTP proxy access cache log info to an external IPFIX/NetFlow Collector. This addresses a long standing feature request and is useful for larger organizations and managed security service providers (MSSPs) with their own network surveillance infrastructure. As a result, customers can add the Barracuda NG Firewall to their existing network monitoring infrastructure.

Support for Xen virtualization

Included in firmware 5.2.3 is support for Citrix Xen and open source Xen hypervisors. Administrators can now deploy either XVA, ZIP or OVF virtual appliances depending on their environment. Please see the blog post “Virtualization and Barracuda NG Firewall” for additional details.

Lightweight NAC client with Microsoft Action Center Integration

Additionally, the NAC Client 2.0 SP6 and NAC Client 3.0 compares the user defined network access policy at the VPN Server in NG Firewall before access to the network is granted through the Windows Action Center. With this, a customer can quickly implement a lightweight network access policy without the need and associated management overhead of a full NAC server. This feature is included with the standard Barracuda NG Firewall VPN client and is available with every Barracuda NG Firewall appliance and virtual system without needing an additional license. For additional detail please see our blog post “Introducing lightweight Network Access Control for VPN Clients at no extra cost”.

Mac Client 3.1

Not technically part of the 5.2.3 firmware release but released simultaneously is an update to the NG Firewall VPN Client for Mac OS. The new version 3.1 includes several minor bug fixes and the number one requested feature by early adopters: Integration to the Keychain. This allows users to store the VPN password securely in the Keychain. Upon connecting to the VPN server, the VPN Client transparently reads the password from the Keychain and submits to the VPN Server, ultimately giving the impression of a single-sign-on methodology.

Available Now

Barracuda NG Firewall firmware release 5.2.3, virtual images for VMware and XenServer as well as the NG Firewall VPN Client for Mac OS 3.1 are available immediately on login.barracudanetworks.com/doc . New hardware units will be shipped with 5.2.3 firmware shortly. As always, we look forward to your feedback as we strive to deliver the best product for organizations of all sizes.

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Introducing lightweight Network Access Control for VPN Clients at no extra cost

March 8th, 2012

Posted by: Markus Lang, product manager

Barracuda Networks has recently introduced the latest versions of its Barracuda NG Network Access Control and VPN Client- the Barracuda NG Network Access Client 3.0 and Service Pack 6 for the Barracuda NG Network Access Client 2.0 both come with a lot of exiting new features.

In case you haven’t had time to browse through the release notes, I wanted to highlight one specific feature that we internally like to call “Diet NAC” or “NAC light” (NAC = Network Access Control).

The full Barracuda NG Network Access Client provides state-of-the-art NAC features such as a managed personal firewall, periodic client health assessments, access control based on client health status, patch level, update status of AV patterns, etc.

The Barracuda NG VPN client, included with every Barracuda NG Firewall unit, now provides the possibility to enforce Windows Security Center settings on client machines running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Sounds great -but what does that mean?

In a nutshell, this new feature allows administrators to centrally enforce the usage of Windows Security settings on every client notebook/PC, which can include the following policies:

• Microsoft Network Firewall must be enabled
• Windows Updates must be enabled
• Windows Virus Protection must be enabled
• Windows Spyware Protection must be enabled
• Internet Security Settings must be enabled
• All of the above or any combination

Image 1: Enforcing Windows Security Settings (click to enlarge)

In case the client does not follow the respective access policy, access to the corporate network will be denied and a meaningful dialogue with instructions on how to change the Windows Security Settings within the Windows Action Center settings will be presented to the client. Also of note, there is no automatic reconnect in case the client changes the Windows Action Center settings to comply with the corporate access policy. Thus, the client still needs to reconnect manually.

Note:
For more information please visit the Barracuda NG Firewall product overview page or is available for download on the Barracuda Portal- the document title is: Barracuda NG Network Access Client Administration Guide. For more information on the Windows Security Center and its features please refer to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Understanding-security-and-safer-computing

Preliminaries:
• Barracuda NG Firewall Firmware versions 5.2.3, 5.0.7 or 4.2.18
• Barracuda NG Network Access Client 2.0 SP6
• Barracuda NG Network Access Client 3.0
• Windows Vista and higher

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Virtualization and the Barracuda NG Firewall

March 5th, 2012

Posted by:  Oliver Braekow, product manager

Starting with firmware release 5.2.3 virtual Barracuda NG Firewall images are not only available as VM Ware images but also as XEN compatible images for XEN Server on login.barracuda.com.

Barracuda provides images for the open Source XEN version (.zip Archive file), as well as images for Citrix Xen Server that support paravirtualization (.pv.xva file) and full virtualization (.hvm.xva file). This will enable customers and service providers to run the Barracuda NG Firewall in their XEN infrastructure and enjoy all the benefits of their virtual environment like: auto provisioning, low TCO, hardware independence, easy hardware migration etc.

We’ve seen requests for official XEN server support especially from medium to large managed security service providers as well as enterprises and are happy to provide this now. If you’d like to test this out yourself and do not yet have a XEN Server installed you may visit the Citrix Xen web site and get a free XenServer here: http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_1688615.asp . As of February 2012 there is even a “Free edition” and Installation is rather straightforward and well documented.

Once up and running, the Citrix XEN Server image available from login.barracuda.com can be deployed and set up the same way as VM Ware images that have been available for download since firmware release 4.2.18. For details please see the “Barracuda NG Firewall Virtual Appliance Quick Start Guide” on www.barracuda.com/doc . 60 days evaluation licenses for virtual Barracuda NG Firewall as well as virtual Barracuda NG Control Center are available from www.barracuda.com/virtualization .

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