barracuda & front-end/back-end config

[penguinroundup]

I have EX2K3 running in a front-end / back-end setup (one of each right now). My barracuda spam filter is currently set to forward incoming mail directly to the back-end server... should it be passing the messages to the front-end first, then letting the front-end transport the messages to the back-end?

thanks

 

[MarkArnold]

Unless you've got several back ends my opinion on this would be that you might as well leave it as-is unless you want to put a different anti-virus engine on the FE in case the Barracuda misses something. Defence in depth would be the case for pushing inbound mail through the FE as well.

 

[xmsre]

In an FE/BE design, the clients conntect to the frontend and then the connection is proxy'd to the backend. It sounds to me like your spam filter sends SMTP mail directly to the backend. In the case, the fact that you're in a FE/BE design is irrelevant. You really haven't stated a reason to do anything different from what you are doing today.

If you wanted all mail to go to a specific server and queue or use a smarthost for inbound mail, then the answer might be different.