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CISCO WIDE AREA FILE SERVICES
As the volume of digital data in enterprises grows, so does the need for immediate access to critical data, greater protection of data, as well as better file management and accessibility. Introducing Cisco Wide Area File Services (WAFS), a solution that consolidates all branch-office information in one central place and enables files from the farthest branch to be shared faster than ever before. Read on to find out how Cisco WAFS has been designed to help improve the way your business stores and manages its most critical digital data.
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Today's centralization challenges
The total cost of ownership of distributive file servers is exceedingly high and continues to grow due to low utilization rates of PC file servers at branch offices, complicated and expensive distributed file server solutions, as well as the continuous need to apply operating system patches and anti-virus software updates.
Although enterprises understand the need for centralization of file servers and storage, the speed of data access across the Wide Area Network (WAN) has prevented companies from adopting centralized storage until now. WAN latency – the time it takes to send a message back and forth across a network – is the major problem with file access protocols that have been designed to work over a Local Area Network (LAN), not across a WAN. And adding bandwidth does not solve the problem either.
On top of this, these challenges are magnified in a distributed environment, with few IT resources at each branch office or sometimes none at all. Couple this with tighter budgets, the need for greater data protection and the need for immediate access to critical data, and it's no wonder that today's enterprises are faced with complex management and centralization issues.
Play our Cisco WAFS Challenge, a fun interactive game with 2 levels, and see how you can tackle these challenges faced by enterprises today.
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The solution: Wide Area File Services (WAFS)
Introducing Cisco Wide Area File Services (WAFS), an emerging technology solution designed to achieve Local Area Network (LAN)-like performance even when accessing files located at very remote branch offices.
Cisco WAFS offers the benefits of centralized storage with local file services to distributed enterprises and organizations with multiple branch offices. WAFS enables companies to consolidate servers and storage, and centralize backup and disaster recovery processes. The end result is a significantly lower total cost of ownership, enhanced protection of branch office data with reduced administration, and LAN-like access across the Wide Area Network (WAN).
The Cisco Edge File Engine (FE) is deployed at each branch office or remote campus, replacing file and print servers and providing fast, near-LAN read and write access to the data center file storage.
At the data center, the Core FE connects directly to one or more Network Attached Storage (NAS) gateways or file servers, performing WAN-optimized file requests on behalf of the remote Edge FEs.
Latency and bandwidth optimization techniques are applied to provide near-LAN access performance. File coherency and locking are applied to ensure data integrity. The WAFS Central Manager (web based) enables centralized control and monitoring of the remote FE appliances. It allows an administrator to centrally configure, define, and monitor policies for each FE or group of FEs.
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Compatible solutions
The combination of WAFS, Cisco Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) enables organizations to reduce costs significantly, drive productivity and enhance the deployment of applications from the data center to the branch offices.
- Network Attached Storage: Cisco NAS technology provides a scalable, high-performance storage networking solution that is easy to deploy and operate, resulting in a lower cost of ownership. By combining Cisco WAFS and NAS technology, customers will have an integrated solution to consolidate branch office data into the data center, allowing company-wide data to be centrally stored, managed, protected and accessed.
Cisco offers NAS solutions together with WAFS to provide a solution that are ideally suited for enterprise storage consolidation over Wide Area Networks (WANs).
With this integrated solution from Cisco, IT administrators will be able to take advantage of centralized resources for backup and disaster recovery to achieve better protection of their branch-office data.
- Application and Content Networking System: Cisco ACNS Software enables organizations of all sizes to extend a diverse set of e-business applications to the branch in order to improve productivity and reduce costs.
Content engines can be deployed in the data center or branch offices to optimize WAN bandwidth, accelerate deployment of mission-critical Web applications, add Web content security, and deliver live and on-demand business video. With the addition of a Cisco Content Distribution Manager, all caching and content-delivery services and devices can be centrally managed.
Organizations can quickly deploy and realize return on investment (ROI) from simple services such as web application acceleration and security, while building a scalable foundation for more advanced and media-intensive applications such as business video and e-learning.
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WAFS resources
Here are some resources that can help you understand the benefits and product features of Cisco WAFS.
A one-time registration is required to download these resources.
Data sheets
Whitepapers
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(PDF, 80 KB) 