CIFS acceleration in WAAS

gururajan · ‎01-22-2008

Hi,

I have tested the CIFS acceleration by creating two connectivity directives in both directions and both WAEs as Core and Edge. My observations are,

1. If the OFFICE1 user opens a remote share from OFFICE2, WAE-OFFICE1 becomes the edge and WAE-OFFICE2 becomes the core (auto discovery happens for file server)

2. When the user copies content from remote share, the caching happens in WAE-OFFICE1 (along with the generic optimizations like TFO,DRE and LZ)

So the consecutive transfer can happen (if the file is not modified in the source) directly from the WAE-OFFICE1 edge device (performance improvement is good)

3. At the same scenario, When the OFFICE1 user tries to copy contents from local to remote share - I dont see any performance difference

Please clarify Whether caching happens only in the edge device or both WAEs

Please provide any troubleshooting document on this case if any.

Thanks,

Guru

muali · ‎01-23-2008

Caching happens only on the Edge WAE. You can lookup CIFS stats using "show cifs ?" on 4.0.13.

gururajan · ‎01-23-2008

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

If only edge device chaches the file, please clarify how cifs transfer will work bidirectional.

I mean, when i am downloading a file acceleration happens perfectly.

But when i do a upload (opening a share folder & copy a file from local machine to share folder), no performance difference is there

It would be very helpful for me if you can clarify this at the earliest.

Thanks in adv,

Guru

muali · ‎01-23-2008

Client --- WAE A-Edge <--> WAE B-Core --- Server

CIFS caching happens on Edge only to server content locally, the contents are checked for freshness (with the Server) every time a request is received at the edge before it's served. For the upload scenario, the reverse will be true. Verify your Edge/Core config and Connectivity directive.

You should also verify that your CIFS accelerator is registered on both WAEs (show tfo accelerator)

gururajan · ‎01-28-2008

Hi,

Thanks for the explanation..

My scenario is this,

Configured 2 connectivity directives for both direction,

Connectivity1,

Client--WAE A (Edge)--- WAE B (Core)-- Server

Connectivity2,

Server--WAE A (Core)--- WAE B (Edge)-- Client

While doing a download from any office, the edge will use the respective connectivity directive and caches the content locally.

What happens for upload action..

- I understand that It must be using the same connectivity directive (WAE near to client -Edge, near to server -Core). When it is not caching in the core, how the acceleration happens (I can see good performance difference but not as good as download action)

Please clarify..

Regards,

Guru