Re: [squid-users] Is it possible to use Squid as a proxy and cache for a slow CIFS drive ?

Squid is a web content cache engine, not a filesystem cache
technology. The filesystem cache / acelleration systems are a
completely different class of technology.

If the Alfresco system is doing database-like things on the back end,
filesystem cacheing in front of it is unlikely to be entirely safe
from a functional / architectural point of view, but you'd need to
talk to the Alfresco engineering team.

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Martin Gilly <mg_at_metamagix.net> wrote:
> Hi all !
>
> We have special scenario with a slow file share where Squid (maybe combined
> with other tools) could help by acting like as a CIFS proxy and caching
> system:
>
> We're testing an Alfresco ECM System which has a CIFS subsystem (based on
> jLAN) that is simply to slow for our needs. In this setup the appserver
> Alfresco (SUSE on vmwars ESXi) and the clients are on a local LAN with Gb
> Ethernet (some clients on WLAN) connectivity and the clients (Windows and
> Mac) access Alfresco via the CIFS share provided by Alfresco.
>
> The Alfresco server is (due to it overhead (talking to the DB, indexing,
> etc.)) about six times slower when storing or reading files than a Samba
> mount on the same machine or a NAS on the same network.
>
> Now my idea is to put a caching layer in the middle between Alfresco and the
> client that ...
> * ... transparently sits in the middle between Alfresco and the clients
> * ... caches read files and (on subsequent access) serves them directly
> instead of from the repository
> * ... caches write operations in a store-and-forward manner like a write
> back cache (ie. signals OK to the client when the file is received locally
> and than writes back to Alfresco asynronously)
>
> So far, I've been discussing this with some WAFS vendors, but the ones I
> came to know don't have anything in their toolbox to acheive this. Now I'm
> completely stuck in finding a way to speed this up :-/
>
> Maybe you can think of a way that Squid - maybe in combination with some
> other tools - can create a solution for this problem ?
>
> thx and kind regards,
>
> martin.
>
>

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert_at_gmail.com