Network File System (NFS) is a common file sharing application used by UNIX file systems. Unlike Microsoft CIFS, the underlying NFS protocol uses either UDP or TCP as a transport mechanism. Therefore, it does not suffer from performance limitations that come with TCP backoff. However, NFS is a relatively chatty protocol, which makes it difficult to deliver this application across a Wide Area Network (WAN).
Silver Peak is able to accelerate the performance of NFS file access and transfers across the WAN. Unlike other acceleration appliances, Silver Peak operates at the Network layer of the ISO stack. Therefore, Network Memory can be used to provide data reduction across NFS and other UDP applications. In addition, Silver Peak employs various compression techniques to reduce the amount of NFS traffic traversing the WAN. The result is a significant improvement in NFS performance (see chart below).
NFS Performance improvements on a 1 MB link with 100 ms latency and 0.05% loss
With Silver Peak, enterprises can centralize NFS file servers, reducing both capital expenses and the ongoing costs associated with maintaining remote file servers.
