Clone DRE / CIFS cache to a new WAE ?

[Mike Campbell]

Is there any means to clone the data from one WAE to another. We are going to be replacing our data center WAE as we have grown. Is there no way to prevent our branch locations from losing their DRE / CIFS cache when we upgrade the data center ?

[Michael Korenbaum]

Mike,

Unfortunately, there is no way to clone the DRE/CIFS cache between devices.  One option which may help prime/pre-populate the DRE cache would be to pre-stage these new devices as client side WAEs in a lab environment and preposition the relevant CIFS shares. This will at least get you some of the DRE data relevant to the file servers, instead of having completely cold hits when these new WAEs go into production in the DC.

Regards,

Mike Korenbaum

Cisco WAAS PDI Help Desk

http://www.cisco.com/go/pdihelpdesk

[Mike Campbell]

This just hit me over lunch.

What if we place the new WAE directly in-line with the old unit. They will auto discover each other, and the new should then build up its' cache over the new 7 to 14 days. We would monitor the number or objects and the size of the cache until they are nearly equal, then just remove the old WAE and connect the new WAE to our primary routers.

We are running using in-line, not WCCP.

Any problem with this thinking ?

[Michael Korenbaum]

This won't work because one of the DC WAEs will be an intermediate WAE.  The connection would flow from the remote client -> remote WAE -> DC WAE 1 -> DC WAE 2 -> server.  In this scenario DC WAE 1 would have the connection listed as PT Intermediate.

Even if you were to disable the remote WAEs and allow the DC WAE 1 and 2 to peer with one another, this is not a desirable configuration, and could potentially lead to performance issues since in that scenario you would be trying to optimize a LAN link.

Regards,

Mike