This month, my fellow IT Pro Technical Evangelists and I are authoring a new articles series on 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. You can catch the full series at http://aka.ms/CloudTop20. In today's article in this series, we'll discuss accelerating content on cloud-based web and file servers using Windows Server 2012 BranchCache. Once implemented, this solution can dramatically improve the user experience when accessing content servers in the cloud across high-latency, low-bandwidth Internet connections.
Traditional file sharing protocols, such as Server Message Block ( SMB ) in Windows Server 2012, are primarily designed for low-latency, high-bandwidth scenarios commonly found in Local Area Networks ( LANs ). When attempting to move file server workloads to the cloud, many IT Pros find that the unpredictable latency and limited bandwidth related to most Internet connections can make it challenging to deliver file services from the cloud in a reliable manner.
In this Step-by-Step article, I’ll walk through a configuration that leverages the BranchCache feature available in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 Enterprise. Once implemented, BranchCache can solve cloud networking challenges by implementing a Wide Area File Services ( WAFS ) solution that caches frequently accessed data locally, either in a Distributed Cache across local clients or on a local Hosted Cache Server.
Lab Scenario: BranchCache Accelerating Content Access from the Cloud
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