We use network accelerators with reasonably good results.
Other potential alternatives:
1) A local copy of the data on the site with replication (maybe a virtual filer and snapmirror, or something like Microsoft's DFS for two way replication) 2) Depending on what you're doing, you could potentially have a local Unix box running Samba that mounts your Flexcache NFS export. It works, but it's pretty horrible as a solution with a fair few limitations
-----Original Message----- From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of John Constable Sent: 07 January 2013 10:18 To: Steven Kreuzer Cc: toasters@teaparty.net Subject: Re: CIFS Proxy
On 4 Jan 2013, at 16:10, Steven Kreuzer skreuzer@freebsd.org wrote:
Greetings-
I have a remote office that is a mix of Windows and Unix clients that have to access a filer far away in our main office.
For the unix folks, we have deployed a flexcache and their quality of life has greatly improved. It looks like NetApp doesn't offer any type of flexcache type solution for CIFS so I am look at other options.
Are there any flexcache like solutions from a 3rd party that people have deployed and is anyone using a tcp accelerator appliance such as Riverbed to speed to access to a volume via CIFS?
Hi Steven,
I've had positive results from using riverbed accelerators between the Uk and India in the past, but they are a bit pricy, and it also depends on what version of CIFS you're using. If the clients can be moved off SMB 1.0 to at least 2.0, then it becomes a much less chatty protocol, and you'll get better performance and less traffic. Of course, it depends on what is causing the problem - latency and bandwidth a riverbed/Citrix Wanscaler will help with due to compression and dedupe, but only so much (but the savings with smb 1.0 are noticeable as it can be optimised at either end). If your clients are all accessing the same set of files, then performance will also improve depending on how often the local riverbed cache gets hit. Can you get stats from your firewall showing the latency, jitter, and if there's bandwidth exhaustion? If nothing else it will help make the case for the above technology.. ;-)
Hope that helps.. -- John Constable, Storage Team x6924 (+44 1223 496924) Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK
-- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in England with number 1021457 and a company registered in England with number 2742969, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
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