Wide-area File Sharing

(waffs)

Wide-area file sharing appliances are hardware devices which attempt to combine WAN optimization with file-caching. They are designed to allow the removal of file servers from remote offices in a wide area network. In theory, the devices would work this way. Using a WAN a file server would reside in the remote office and anyone wanting to edit a document would find that document on the WAN via the file server and then edit it over the network. Using a WAFS appliance, the appliance would find the document on the WAN, lock it so nobody can change it, and copy it to the local WAFS where the remote user would do any necessary editing with a much faster response time since the document is now on a local device. When the user is finished editing the WAFS copies the document back to the WAN location and unlocks it. The technology is young and has some obvious potential problems associated with it. For example, what happens when the WAFS has locked a file for local editing and the connection between the WAFS and WAN goes down? Adding to this, what if that break causes the file to become unlocked and someone else edits it before the connection comes back up? These sorts of things can cause data instability at present and need to be addressed before WAFS becomes wide-spread. At the moment, the best use of a WAFS appliance is for distributed backups.

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