Configure file acceleration
SMB Acceleration is the file transfer specific component of the Exinda Application Acceleration Technology. To deal with inefficiencies in the SMB protocol, the Exinda Appliance has several optimizations to improve the performance of applications using this protocol, including reading ahead of the data stream, writing behind the data stream, and caching meta data on files and folders.
SMB acceleration makes the following scenarios more efficient:
- File Download (Read) – The SMB client is reading a file from an SMB server. The server-side Exinda proactively requests future read events and passes the read information to the client-side Exinda so that it is available locally and immediately to the SMB client.
- File Upload (Write) – Similar to the read scenario, the Exinda appliance proactively transfers write data to the other Exinda. The client-side Exinda responds locally to write requests from the SMB client and passes the data to the server-side Exinda at WANWide Area Network link speed to complete the write operation.
- Remote Access of Microsoft Office Files – Microsoft office files (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) which reside on a remote SMB server are often opened from a SMB client. The Exinda SMB Acceleration addresses slow downloads by pre-fetching the file data and populating it on the client side Exinda. Consequently, all SMB client requests for the file data are served from the client side Exinda at LANLocal area network speeds.
- Directory Browsing – When browsing a remote file system using Windows Explorer, the SMB protocol transfers various bits of information about the files you are browsing. This metadata is transferred in special SMB instructions called transactions. The Exinda appliance also caches these transactions such that they can be served locally, from the client-side Exinda appliance. This significantly improves the performance of directory browsing using the SMB protocol.