* Cisco claims File Engine's WAN file transfer speeds rival throughput of LAN
On Tuesday, Cisco announced the release of its Cisco File Engine, a rack-mounted wide area file services system aimed at IT organizations that support sharing and other file services for remote locations.
The purpose of the File Engine is to enable employees at branches with no IT support to enjoy the same level of file accessibility as do employees who work with data that gets core corporate services. Assuming the remote office has a T-1 connection and between 10 and 150 people per branch accessing Common Internet File System (CIFS)-based data (Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, for example), Cisco says File Engine’s file transfer speeds on a WAN will rival throughput on a LAN. This means files will open approximately 7-8 times faster than occurs in a native WAN environment, and that users will be able to save files in about one-fifth to one-eighth the time it now takes on a WAN.
Although faster throughput will be a major selling point, the product is designed to do more than just accelerate file I/O. It also provides native end-to-end CIFS/Network File System (NFS) support, global locking and coherency, and other data integrity controls, features clustering and a transactional cache for use during recoveries, and offers WAN-based print and software distribution services.
Using the File Engine, managers should be able to centralize the storage of remote files. This means that, because master copies of remote files can now be stored in data center, they can be centrally managed and protected from the data center as well. This is likely to have either of two results.
First, as it will remove the need to rely on services that originate in the remote offices themselves, one consequence should be the elimination of a need to purchase and manage remote back-up hardware assets.
A second possibility is much more likely, however. As most remote offices never receive much in the way of IT services to begin with, value will be delivered because they finally will have their data protected as effectively as if they had immediate access to the IT center. Such situations don’t really lend themselves to total cost of ownership analysis, but a return on investment analysis is sure to demonstrate the value.
The File Engine has a Web-based management console, and Cisco says File Engine can be installed in 10 minutes.
The Cisco File Engine lists at $12,000 with a 50-user license. Larger sites can buy licenses for additional users at a rate of $4,500 per 50 users.
