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According to industry analysts, fewer than 20% of mission critical Internet applications achieve internal objectives for continuous availability. Challenges include maintaining uptime when servers fail, scaling data center capabilities to handle increased load, and protecting infrastructure from network vulnerabilities.
The Barracuda Load Balancer is designed to provide comprehensive IP load balancing capabilities to any IP-based application, including:
- Internet sites with high traffic requirements, such as Web, FTP, media streaming, and content delivery networks
- Hosted applications using thin-client architectures, like Citrix or Windows Terminal Services
- Other IP services requiring optimal performance, including SMTP, DNS, RADIUS, and TFTP
The Barracuda Load Balancer’s integrated Service Monitor ensures that servers and their associated applications are operational. In the event of server or application failure, the Barracuda Load Balancer facilitates automatic failover to ensure continuous availability. The Barracuda Load Balancer also assists in orchestrating scheduled maintenance windows on specific servers while maintaining application availability through other servers in the server farm.
To mitigate risks associated with failures of the load balancers themselves, two Barracuda Load Balancers can be deployed in an active/passive configuration. In the event of failure of a primary active Barracuda Load Balancer, the secondary Barracuda Load Balancer will automatically activate and assume the identity of the primary load balancer so as to maintain application availability.
The Barracuda Load Balancer is extremely easy to deploy, featuring automatic discovery and configuration tools through an intuitive Web interface. To minimize ongoing administration associated with security, the Barracuda Load Balancer automatically receives current intrusion prevention and security updates from Barracuda Central, an advanced technology operations center where engineers continuously monitor and mitigate the latest Internet threats.
The Barracuda Load Balancer also facilitates automatic configuration through a Web-based application programming interface (API) and system monitoring through SNMP.
While price and complexity have historically restricted some organizations from deploying load balancers, the Barracuda Load Balancer is designed for organizations of all sizes. With no per port or per server license fees, the Barracuda Load Balancer is the most affordable enterprise-grade load balancing solution in its class.
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