Wide Area File Services

Wide Area File Services are a hot topic. Interest has been gathering in the technology since it first appeared in 2002, and gradually, as it has matured, vendors have begun to scramble to add WAFS to their product range.

Wide Area File Services (WAFS) is a storage technology that makes it possible to access a remote data centre as if it was local. It bypasses WAN latency issues and effectively makes the branch office part of the core network for the first time.

For enterprises and organisations with branch offices, the case for WAFS is compelling. The challenges of managing data growth in a distributed environment have been documented in an IDC report concerning data management in distributed environments. The report found that as much as 60% of a company's data lies outside its data centre and is stored on edge file servers, branch office desktops or remote laptops. The implications for security and compliance are worrying. Managing regular backups of the data held on the edge of the network is a near impossibility.

Implementing a WAFS solution effectively brings all that data back into the data center in the core network. This has far reaching implications for data management in a distributed organisation.

WAFS Benefits

The benefits of WAFS technology to companies with branch offices can be far reaching:

• Reduces TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and improves asset management through centralised management of infrastructure
• Improves data management and protection by keeping a master copy of all files and content at the data centre
• Security and compliance: centrally manage backups in real time
• Round the clock access to data for all network end users
• Low latency and rapid data transfer - LAN speeds on the WAN
• Continuous real time backups
• Increased security through centralised data management
• Reduced network management overheads
• Rapid System recovery

Cisco were among the first to market with a reliable solution, releasing the Cisco File Engine Series in 2004. Experience supplying WAF solutions to customers has resulted in the current Wide Area File Services software, part of the Cisco Wide-Area Application Services solution (WAAS).