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Barracuda Link Balancer
Overview Documentation Materials

Attention

As of 1st March 2019, all new sales for the Barracuda Link Balancer product will cease. Only renewals of software and hardware subscriptions for a maximum of one year is available for a limited time. 1st March 2020: All Barracuda Link Balancer sales will cease; neither new sales nor any renewals will be available. If you currently hold a maintenance and support contract, you will continue to receive our award-winning support and services until your contract expires.

Installation Replacing Your Firewall

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These instructions describe how to deploy the Barracuda Link Balancer as the default gateway for your network, replacing your existing firewall or router. These steps allow you to configure the Barracuda Link Balancer completely before connecting it to your production system copying the firewall configuration of your existing firewall to the Barracuda Link Balancer. (A similar process is described in the Barracuda Link Balancer Quick Start Guide.)

Step 1. Prepare for the Installation

Before installing your Barracuda Link Balancer, verify that you have the necessary equipment:

  • Barracuda Link Balancer and AC power cord (included)
  • Ethernet cables
  • PC with a web browser

Plug in the Barracuda Link Balancer and power it on.

Step 2. Activate the Barracuda Link Balancer with Temporary Network Settings

Follow these steps to configure the Barracuda Link Balancer with temporary settings and activate it:

  1. Change the network settings of a PC with a web browser installed to use an IP address of 192.168.200.10, subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and gateway of 192.168.200.200. Depending on the model, there may be a LAN port on the front or back side of the Barracuda Link Balancer. Connect an Ethernet cable from the PC to that LAN port.
     linkbal-frontpanel.png
          backpanel.png
  2. Start the web browser and access the web interface by typing http://192.168.200.200:8000 . 

  3. Log in with the username admin . The password is Your default administrator password is based on your serial number. 

    If your serial number is...
    Then your default admin password is...
    higher than  1311431 the numeric portion of the serial number, as shown above
    less than or equal to   1311431admin

     

    See Serial Number for Hardware and Virtual Appliances.

  4. Go to the Basic > Links page and double-click one of the WAN ports in the graphic.
  5. In the Links Configuration section, set the Type of the WAN link to DHCP to acquire an address in the office network. Alternatively, set the link Type to Static and enter a specific IP address. 
  6. Click Save Changes .
  7. Connect an Ethernet cable from the corresponding WAN port on the front of the Barracuda Link Balancer into your office network. You should now have Internet connectivity from your PC.
  8. At the top of every page, you may see an activation warning message.  Click the link in that message or use the link on the Basic > Status page to open up the Barracuda Networks Product Activation page in a new browser window. 
  9. Fill in the required fields and click Activate . A confirmation page opens to display the terms of your subscription. On the Basic > Status page, you may need to enter the activation code from the Barracuda Networks Product Activation page to activate your Barracuda Link Balancer.

 If your subscription status does not change to Current, or if you have trouble filling out the Product Activation page, call your Barracuda Networks sales representative.

Step 3. Update the Firmware

Go to the Advanced > Firmware Update page. If there is a new Latest General Release available (the Download Now button is enabled), do the following to update the system firmware:

  1. Read the release notes to learn about the features of this firmware update.
  2. Click Download Now next to the Latest General Release firmware version. 
  3. Click OK to acknowledge the download duration message. To avoid damaging the Barracuda Link Balancer, do not power off during an update or download. To view the progress of the download, click Refresh. You will be notified when the download is complete.
  4. Click Apply Now to apply the firmware. 
  5. Click OK to acknowledge the reboot message. Applying the firmware takes a few minutes to complete.

After the firmware has been applied, the Barracuda Link Balancer automatically reboots. When the system comes back up, the login page is displayed. Log in again.

Step 4. Configure Permanent WAN Settings

After the Barracuda Link Balancer has rebooted, log into the web interface and go to the Basic > Links page.

For each link to connect to this unit:

  1. Click the relevant WAN port in the graphic.
  2. In the Links Configuration section, enter the details for the link to be connected to the WAN port. Some of the configuration information is provided by your ISP - be sure to enter it correctly.
  3. When done, click Save Changes .

For each WAN interface that has a static IP address, enter all of your externally accessible servers in the Additional IP Addresses field. These need to be identified so that traffic can be accepted for them. You also need to reconfigure the servers with private IP addresses. In the next step, you can create firewall 1:1 NAT rules to direct traffic to those systems.

Step 5. Configure the Barracuda Link Balancer Firewall

Create firewall rules on the Barracuda Link Balancer to match the settings of your current firewall.

  • Go to the Firewall > Access Rules page to add incoming and outgoing rules.
  • Go to the Firewall > NAT page to add 1:1 NAT and port forwarding rules.

Step 6. Configure Permanent LAN IP Address

  1. Change the LAN IP address of the Barracuda Link Balancer to its permanent setting as the default gateway for your network. To change the LAN IP address, go to the Basic > IP Configuration page and change IP address and subnet mask. 
  2. Click Save Changes. The connection to the PC that you were using will terminate.
  3. Unplug the cable connecting your PC to the Barracuda Link Balancer.
  4. Power down your Barracuda Link Balancer using the power button on the front of the unit.

Step 7. Install in the Production Network

Now that the Barracuda Link Balancer is configured, install it in its permanent location and make it part of your production network:

  1. Mount the Barracuda Link Balancer in a 19-inch rack or place it in a stable location. To ensure proper ventilation, do not block the cooling vents on the front and back of the unit.
  2. Connect each of the cables from the Internet links into a WAN port on the front of the Barracuda Link Balancer. The ports are labeled WAN1, WAN2, etc. These ports correspond to the WAN ports that you configured in the web interface. Be sure to connect them according to your configuration.
  3. Unplug your firewall from the network and plug its LAN connection into the LAN port on the front of the Barracuda Link Balancer, if there is one. If there is no LAN port on the front, plug that connection into the LAN ethernet port on the back panel of the Barracuda Link Balancer. You should see some activity on both the yellow and green lights on the LAN port. If not, you may need to use a crossover cable.
  4. If the IP address of the Barracuda Link Balancer is the same as the IP address of the firewall that you removed, you can ignore this step. Otherwise, make the Barracuda Link Balancer the default gateway for the clients by updating the configuration of the DHCP server for the clients to give out the LAN IP address of the Barracuda Link Balancer as the default gateway. As the leases are renewed, each client will gain access to the new Internet links. Furthermore, change the default gateway of any clients with static IP addresses to the LAN IP address of the Barracuda Link Balancer.

Step 8. Test Connectivity

Test the connectivity to a client system:

  1. If needed, change the gateway IP address of a test system to the LAN IP address of the Barracuda Link Balancer.
  2. Confirm that you can access the Internet from the test system. If this works, continue.
  3. On the test system, log into the web interface using the permanent LAN IP address and go to the Basic > Links page. The status of each link should display as Connected. You can see the utilization of each link by moving the mouse over the graphic.
  4. On the test system, generate some traffic, by, for example, opening more tabs in the browser of the test system and downloading files from the Internet. FTP files from a number of different sites or use BitTorrent to get the traffic to flow on multiple links. 
  5. Go to the Basic > Status page to view graphs that show the incoming and outgoing traffic for each link.

If you have connectivity issues, clear the ARP caches of your existing network components such as routers and modems. In some cases, you may need to reboot these devices.

Continue with Step 1: Configure Administrative Settings.