The Barracuda Load Balancer is designed to provide fast and comprehensive IP load balancing capabilities to any IP-based application, including:

Intrusion Prevention System
Many security technologies are integrated into the Barracuda Load Balancer. The set-and-forget, best of breed Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) helps secure your network, even if you miss a patch or if an exploit manages to get past your existing security. In addition to the Denial of Service (DDoS) protection provided for all load balanced servers by the built-in IPS, the Barracuda Load Balancer will also automatically block any exploits that are detected across multiple protocols, with no extra configuration required. Exploit signatures are regularly updated at Barracuda Central, and are automatically delivered to your Barracuda Load Balancer via Energize Updates.

Auto-Discover Mode
All models of the Barracuda Load Balancer support Auto-Discovery of Real Servers and Services, to ensure quick and easy deployment of new servers. For common services, there's no need to manually configure each port. The Barracuda Load Balancer automatically detects which services are running on a specified server, which saves on deployment and configuration time.

IP Persistence
The Barracuda Load Balancer supports technology that directs clients back to the same server to establish session server persistence. In environments where session persistence is required, Layer 4 IP persistence provides a fast and reliable solution for most configurations including most encrypted e-commerce traffic, database, and Terminal Services configurations. The timeout is fully configurable and can be enabled on a service level.

Scheduling Policy
Multiple scheduling technologies are supported by the Barracuda Load Balancer, including server weighting, Weighted Least Connection (WLC), and Weighted Round Robin (WRR).

Automated Service Monitor
A fully integrated service monitor is available on all Barracuda Load Balancers, which allows for easy re-configuration of your servers based on the availability of your upstream and downstream infrastructure components. Downed servers are automatically removed from the farm within seconds of server failure.

Multiple Deployment Modes
The Barracuda Load Balancer supports three different operating modes for the most flexibility of any load balancer on the market. Route-path offers the most flexibility, while Bridge-path allows deployment without changes to existing IP infrastructure. Direct Server Returnallows up to 10GB throughput, ideal for content delivery networks.

High Availability
High Availability is easy to set up with the Barracuda Load Balancer's Web interface. Simply point the secondary (backup) Barracuda Load Balancer to the primary Load Balancer's management IP address, and the load balancer synchronizes configurations to establish a highly available network that brings your server farm to enterprise grade availability.

Web Administrative Interface
The Barracuda Load Balancer configuration is executed through an intuitive Web interface. With features such as quick server and service adding, health monitoring, and Auto-Discover, the Barracuda Load Balancer is easy to use -- a typical configuration can be performed in less than ten minutes!

Content Routing

Barracuda Load Balancer can route traffic to different server based on incoming content. Routing of traffic based on content can be enforced either based on different parameters such header values, cookies, domain name and URL.