Load balancing Barracuda Web Filter
About Barracuda Web Filter
The Barracuda Web Filter lets organizations benefit from online applications and tools without exposure to web-borne malware and viruses, lost user productivity, and misused bandwidth. As a comprehensive solution for web security and management, it unites award-winning spyware, malware, and virus protection with a powerful policy and reporting engine. Advanced features ensure that organizations adapt to emerging requirements like social-network regulation, remote filtering, and visibility into SSL-encrypted traffic.
Key benefits of load balancing
Implementing Loadbalancer.org appliances enables multiple Barracuda Web Filter to be deployed in a cluster. This provides the following key benefits:
- High-availability – If a Web Gateway fails, service is not interrupted
- Maintenance – Web Gateways can easily be taken out of the cluster for maintenance
- Performance – For additional performance simply add more Web Gateways to the cluster
How to load balance Barracuda Web Filter
We recommend deploying in Layer 4 (Recommended) DR Mode – Direct Server Return Mode (Recommended) In this mode, traffic from the client to the Web Filter passes via the load balancer, return traffic passes directly back to the client which maximizes performance. Direct routing works by changing the destination MAC address of the incoming packet on the fly which is very fast. This mode is transparent by default meaning that the Web Filter sees the real client IP address and not the IP address of the load balancer. Due to its speed, overall simplicity and effectiveness, Direct Routing (DR) mode with source IP persistence is our recommended method and can be used in both Explicit Proxy Mode & Transparent Routed Proxy Mode.
For more information about how to deploy Barracuda Web Filter read our deployment guide below.
deployment guide
Barracuda Web Filter Deployment Guide
Read deployment guidemanual
Administration manual v8
Read manual
