WAE574 File Caching Optimization Question

routeinet · ‎06-23-2010

Hello,

We've a remote site with about 80GBs of data. We're planning to centralize these data in the data center NAS and access the data from a remote site and optimize the data via WAEs.

We've WAE574 at a remote and and pair of WAE7371s at the data center.

Is there's a way to pre-stage about 80Gs of data on the remote WAE574 utilizing the USB flash drive without creating a virtual server on the WAE574 ? or

What would be the best way to somehow cache or move 80Gs of data on the the file server to a remote WAE574 without accessing file by file ?

Casey Compton · ‎06-23-2010

You should be able to preposition the data.

Prepositioning is done to prime the CIFS cache on the remote WAE. Priming the CIFS cache allows the first user of a file to experience the same performance level as subsequent users normally get.

1) From the Dashboard go to Configure->File Services->Preposition and click the “Create” icon.

2) Enter the name for the preposition rule, file server name, and the Active Directory credentials the WAEs should use to retrieve the data. This AD username/password is only used by the WAEs for gathering prepositioned data. Enter the directories to preposition. If the AD credentials are correct you can click the Browse button to select the directories.

3) Go to the Assign Edge Devices tab and assign the appropriate devices to preposition the data to.

4) Go to the Schedule tab to schedule the preposition job. The screen shot below shows a job configured to run at midnight daily. Once finished click Submit.

5) Use the Preposition Status tab to monitor the status of the preposition job.

routeinet · ‎06-23-2010

Thank you very much for your quick response. I've couple more questions.

1. If you're to use the "prepositioning" function, Do you have any control over how much data can traverse over WAN circuit(T1) ?

2. How many simultaneous prepositionings can you create ?

3. Can you preposition any other type of traffic beside CIFS ?

Ryan Posey · ‎06-23-2010

Can a new WAE pull prepositioning CIFS Cache from another WAE that has been in place for several months?

Example:

I have a new WAE 674 being stood up in 1 week, I have several WAE 512s in other branches today. How would I pull the content off a current WAE 512 to a File Server and tell the new WAE 674 to retrieve that content?

Zach Seils · ‎06-24-2010

WAAS can only preposition content directly from an origin server. There is no tiered preposition capability.

The cached content on the 512s you have today is a copy of content on an orgin server. You would configure the 674 to preposition the content from that origin server directly. If it's possible to bring the 674 up at the same location at the origin server before you deploy it, the initial preposition could be done over the LAN for improved performance.

Regards,

Zach