Riverbed Wide Area File Services (WAFS) vs Wide Area Data Services (WDS)

Wide Area File Services (WAFS) vs Wide Area Data Services (WDS)

Wide Area File Services (WAFS) are technologies that allow for the consolidation of file servers from remote locations to the data center without decreasing end user performance. Since its first launch, Riverbed's wide-area data services (WDS) solution have provided WAFS value to its customers. But by providing a WDS solution, Riverbed has allowed its customers to do much more than any WAFS-only solutions can do, by providing application acceleration for all key enterprise applications running over TCP. While WAFS can be a valuable tool for many users, it is only a part of the total remote office solution that most enterprises require.

While WAFS solutions look at bandwidth and application performance problems to do with file sharing, the typical organization has a heterogeneous combination of data and applications moving throughout its network to remote sites. The types of data include email, web-based enterprise applications, database applications, ERP, FTP, backup and replication, proprietary applications, etc. Wide-area data services solutions, differ, because they accelerate all of these types of data transfers and applications. By using this acceleration approach, WDS solutions resolve the problems that WAFS address, but also satisfy a much wider range of various customer requirements. In fact, several industry analysts have compared WAFS versus WDS, and have determined that WAFS is just a subset of WDS.

Limitations of WAFS-Only Solutions

WAFS appliances are a type of caching appliance which work by storing copies of files that have been accessed over a WAN in local devices, so that users after that get accelerated performance. A WAFS-only approach however is very limited. The table below gives a comparison of some of the obvious differences between a WAFS-only approach, and Riverbed's solution.

Other Limitations of WAFS

Wide area file services can be an important function for organizations who need to accelerate consolidated file servers. But WAFS comes with many limits that every organization needs to understand:

• WAFS is limited to file sharing. WAFS products can only cache files that are sent over the WAN via application protocols they know, which means that they are limited primarily to CIFS and NFS caching.
• WAFS cannot deal effectivly with some changes to data. In the event of a change of file name or a move of a file from one directory to another, WAFS products typically require the complete file to once again be transferred across the WAN. This severely limits application performance optimization under many common use cases.
• WAFS keeps multiple file copies. The way WAFS operates, it must store many copies of a particular file throughout the network inorder to accelerate performance. Not only is this a security risk, but it can lead to versioning problems whereby users in different locations are accessing the different version of the same file.
• WAFS is not made for disaster recovery. Because WAFS functions by short-circuiting the typical communications processes of applications, it does not help in disaster recovery scenarios. It also lacks any meaningful application protocol optimization in order to accelerate the performance of disaster recovery applications.
• WAFS may not ease IT management. WAFS is generally designed on top of windows servers. Instead of creating a true appliance design, WAFS appliances require IT managers to put the same amount of effort into managing WAFS servers as they would any other remote server.

For more technical detail on WAFS and its approach to application acceleration, download the whitepaper The Five Ugly Truths About WAFS and Caching.

The Wide-area Data Services (WDS) Approach

Compared to WAFS-only products, WDS appliances deliver a far wider solution that optimizes file sharing traffic and allows file server consolidation, but also provides the following important advantages:

WDS Key Benefits

• WDS accelerates the performance of all TCP applications on your WAN, including web applications, FTP, Exchange, web content (both static and dynamic), Lotus Notes, SMS, backup traffic, block and file level replication, and ERP applications. Acceleration of applications differ, but they can often be accelerated by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times
• WDS allows for consolidation of a wide range of IT infrastructure: File servers, Microsoft Exchange servers, Lotus Notes servers, tape backup systems, and storage.
• WDS optimizes WAN bandwidth utilization, typically reducing usage by 60% to 95%.

In comparative evaluations of WAFS versus WDS, customers consistently select a WDS solution because it provides all the benefits of WAFS plus much more

Datasheets:

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