Grouping Barracuda Networks products enables you to manage settings and apply policies across multiple Barracuda Networks products of the same type from one web interface. You can also use “grouping” to organize your Barracuda Networks products by location, company, department, etc., and you can include products of different types. Grouping happens in one of two ways:
- By default, the Barracuda Control Server groups Barracuda Networks products by product type. For example, if you have two or more Barracuda Web Application Firewalls connected to a Barracuda Control Server, they are automatically grouped as such. You can then click on that product type in the Cloud Control pane and see one web interface with aggregated statistics and settings for all of the devices within that group. From the web interface, you can set policies for all of the products in the group at the same time since they are the same product type. This group context also enables reporting on aggregated statistics across a group.
- You can create a grouping of two or more products. When you click on that group in the Cloud Control pane, aggregated statistics display on the Dashboard page for each product type in the group.
Additional reasons to manage products in the group context include:
- If you have many devices in one or more locations, managing them with a central console enables you to easily track firmware versions across products and keep them up-to-date.
- Grouping devices by location helps you keep track of where each device is physically located in case it needs service. As long as the unit is joined to the Barracuda Control Server, you do not need to look up the admin password to configure or update the product.
- Grouping devices of the same type enables viewing ‘exceptions’ in which values for the same setting differ across the devices.
- Grouping either devices of the same type or of different types provides a performance and traffic statistic snapshot on the BASIC > Dashboard page for each device in the group. Statistics are aggregated for devices of the same type.