Re: Some guidance, please
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:49 pm
Manny I'm a bit reluctant to answer you... However I was a bit vague..
I've tested this extensively and I know for a fact that fancycache works via SMB. I've used it this way everyday for the past year and I get hit rates of 100% with transfers averaging 4GBs (love my 40Gbs network).
SMB is a networking protocol and it sits on a different layer of the OS stack then the storage system. SMB can be switched out for any networking protocol (FTP, CIFS, NetBios, NFS, AppleTalk) and it doesn't make any difference to FancyCache or Windows (other than overhead costs). The networking/file-sharing protocol will make requests for data that will be filled by the storage system. If the data is in the cache, Fancycache it will fulfill the request through the storage system.
The only way you will see FancyCache directly affected by SMB is if you create a VHD(x) on a SMB share and you mount it across the network. Fancycache will see the mounted (VHD) drive and it will be available for caching. However there is no point to do this unless you are running at least a 10Gb network (1GB wirespeed) with RDMA and a Win8-2012 (SMB3) fileserver, as Win7-2008r2 SMB2.1 has high latency penalties and huge overhead costs..
I've tested this extensively and I know for a fact that fancycache works via SMB. I've used it this way everyday for the past year and I get hit rates of 100% with transfers averaging 4GBs (love my 40Gbs network).
SMB is a networking protocol and it sits on a different layer of the OS stack then the storage system. SMB can be switched out for any networking protocol (FTP, CIFS, NetBios, NFS, AppleTalk) and it doesn't make any difference to FancyCache or Windows (other than overhead costs). The networking/file-sharing protocol will make requests for data that will be filled by the storage system. If the data is in the cache, Fancycache it will fulfill the request through the storage system.
The only way you will see FancyCache directly affected by SMB is if you create a VHD(x) on a SMB share and you mount it across the network. Fancycache will see the mounted (VHD) drive and it will be available for caching. However there is no point to do this unless you are running at least a 10Gb network (1GB wirespeed) with RDMA and a Win8-2012 (SMB3) fileserver, as Win7-2008r2 SMB2.1 has high latency penalties and huge overhead costs..