core cluster in WAAS

[axfalk]

We're attempting to configure a Core Cluster for the WAE-612 and got confused when entering the access information for the CIFS file server that his core cluster will export. The doc is saying that we can only enter access info for 1 file server. I was under the impression we can include more than 1 file server in the core cluster. Can someone please clarify this? thnx..

[dstolt]

I hate to say it depends, but it really does. If you are copying CIFS files repeatedly, you literally get awesome response times and bandwidth reduction. If your exchange servers have encryption enabled, you won't see any reduction on that traffic at all until a future release. If like most normal enterprises there is lots of similar http traffic and a large amount of CIFS traffic, I have see anywhere from 30-80+% reduction in TCP traffic. If you links are not very congested, application responses may not be as dramatic, however you should be able to fit a ton more data across the links.

However, CIFS acceleration should be "eye-popping" to low bandwidth, med-high latency links.

Dan

[ronbuchalski]

What about UNC connections to PCs that utilize CIFS for file transfers? I have not been able to see an improvement in response for these types of transfers between hosts.

Is there anything that can be done to improve this?

-rb

[Zach Seils]

Ron,

Accessing files via UNC still leverages CIFS, so the opportunity for acceleration is there. I would start by verifying that the sessions are being handled by WAFS. From the WAE running the WAFS Edge service, use the following command to see the list of sessions being handled by WAFS:

show cifs session list

And the following command to see the file server auto-discovery entries:

show cifs auto last

Zach

[axfalk]

Zach,

We have used the "show cifs session list" command to verify that the CIFS traffic to/from the edsge site is getting accelerated. However, lately we have not been seeing any sessions - does that mean all the traffic is going to the local WAE?

Thanks..

[Zach Seils]

It means that the CIFS session is not being accelerated by WAFS. Can you verify that the destination file server has been auto-discovered:

sh cifs auto last

Thanks,

Zach

[axfalk]

Dan,

unfortunately, our customer insists on comparing the wae response to the local one, although he's willing to accept a post-optimization remote numbers that would not exceed 2 times the local ones. We're getting good results when compared to the pre-optimization remote numbers, but not the local ones. In addition, he's also setup a high end PC (Pentium 4, 2.80 GZ) that is used for the local testing (reading files, writing files, opening files, etc). Wouldn't the type of this machine skew the local numbers even more? - i.e. the local speed would be directly related to how powerful the testing PC is?

Thanks