AutoCAD traffic using WAAS

mitchellkj · ‎01-15-2008

We installed WAAS last year. We see improvements with file acceleration with Microsoft based files, but no improvement with AutoCAD files. It still remains slooooow. I have even setup a preposition job for AutoCAD 'content' and all of our projects.

I'm running 4.0.15.b.6 on all my WAE devices.

Any help would be appreciated.

This is my first time using this forum so if my conversation needs to be moved to the correct forum, please do.

Thanks, KM

Danilo Dy · ‎01-15-2008

Hi,

Are you trying to open the drawing file/s online or just transfer the file/s across WAAS?

BTW, the proper forum for WAAS is "Networking Professionals > Data Center > Application Networking"

Regards,

Dandy

mitchellkj · ‎01-15-2008

I'm trying to open the files directly within AutoCAD. So it would be online, not a transfer. I guess it depends on if WAAS is performing correctly.

Is there a way to view if WASS is serving up the prepositioned files ??

KM

Danilo Dy · ‎01-15-2008

Hi,

I haven't use WAAS for some reason :). But yes, it depends on the WAAS. There are people who might suggest an alternative (i.e. CITRIX), but to my experience, only a WAN optimization device can solve your problem because of the file sharing protocol that AutoCAD uses to open and save file to/from server.

Regards,

Dandy

mlouis · ‎04-18-2008

We have a similar issue with WAAS and AutoCad 2008. Some autocad file types are actually multiple files opened inside of another file. We have a small file that opens 10 files in serial with it. It takes about 60 seconds to open the file with WAAS and about 3 seconds on the local LAN. After some packet captures with wireshark we found that over 75% of the delay was associated to the file locking and unlocking procedures within the CIFS protocol. WAFS will pass these through to the remote file server, and thus these packets are subject to round trip delays of the WAN. Since the AutoCad program we were using had to wait for one file to open before it opened the next file these round trips caused considerable file open delay. Talking with TAC that was the normal behavior of WAFS to maintain file coherency.

Running the WAFS benchmark tool produced results we normally would expect during acceleration so WAAS/WAFS was working as expected. Some parts of the file open (reads for example) were cached and were LAN like speeds however the file locks were not as noted. If we copied the autocad files to the desktop speeds were fast but when opening from the remote server file locking created most of the delay.

HTH

mike