Move WAN Accelerator Cache to SMB Share

[bernd.dausch]

Hi all,

we will Install a WAN Accelerator VM, and have Sized our WAN Accelerator Cache. We need initial 150 GB Cache Space.

The VM is on a Fibre Chanel SAN with much more costs as a Windows Storage Server with Storage Spaces.

I have two questions:

- Can we move the Cache to a CIFS Share to reduce Storage cost for Cache ?
- Can different WAN Accelerators Share a Global Cache in a CIFS Share, to Load Balance WAN Accelerators?

Best Regards

Bernd

[PTide]

Hi,

- Can we move the Cache to a CIFS Share to reduce Storage cost for Cache ?
- Can different WAN Accelerators Share a Global Cache in a CIFS Share, to Load Balance WAN Accelerators?

No, you cannot select shared folders or network drives as a location for WAN accelerator cache.

Thanks

[bernd.dausch]

Is it on the RoadMap or can we make a Feature Request ?

Thanks

Bernd

[widmerkarl]

Hi,

I don't thin that it's on a roadmap. But for sure, you can make a feature request.

Caches for WAN accellerators have high I/O for reading it's content and creating new content, also for creating fingerprints and digests of the datablocks. So it's also recommended that you place this Cache on fast disk systems like SSD or fast SAS.

This is at least one reason for having this caches locally on the specific WAN accellerator.

[PTide]

I don't thin that it's on a roadmap. But for sure, you can make a feature request.

There were plans to make it possible to use shared folders as a location for WAN cache in v7, however it was pruned during testing stage due to various complications (including performance).

<...>it's also recommended that you place this Cache on fast disk systems like SSD or fast SAS.

Due to some optimizations in v8 SSD won't give a noticeable global cache performance improvement.

Bernd, as a workaround you can connect iSCSI LUN to your WANacc box and place WAN cache there.

Thanks

[widmerkarl]

Due to some optimizations in v8 SSD won't give a noticeable global cache performance improvement.

Thanks for this info!

And yes, at one of my customer i did it as PTide wrote, created a iSCSI LUN and connected it to the Target Cache / WANacc box. That worked like a charm!

[bernd.dausch]

We use Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 with local Storage as Backup Repository. Is it possible to Install the WAN Accelerator on the Backup Repository?

Thanks

[PTide]

Yes it is possible, just make sure that your repository machine has enough power to hold two roles simultaneously.

Thanks

[bernd.dausch]

@PTide: perfekt, so i try this.

Thanks

Bernd