Edison Strategy Report

Edison Group Strategy Report

Table of Contents

Executive Summary........................................................................................................1

Purpose of the Report.....................................................................................................1

Who Should Read this Report?....................................................................................1

General Overview of SMB and CIFS..........................................................................2

DEFINING SMB AND CIFS...........................................................................................................2

COLLABORATIVE FILE SHARING..............................................................................................2

NETWORK FILE SYSTEM TRAFFIC.................................................................................................3

ENHANCED COMMUNICATIONS..............................................................................................4

FILE SHARING PERFORMANCE.....................................................................................................6

SECURITY.....................................................................................................................................8

SCALABILITY................................................................................................................................9

FILENAMES..................................................................................................................................9

NFS.......................................................................................................................................10

NetBench Performance Metrics..................................................................................11

Performance Analysis Methodology.........................................................................11

Test Lab Design.............................................................................................................12

STRESS?TESTING SOFTWARE.......................................................................................................12

STRESS?TESTING NODES AND CLIENT TUNING PARAMETERS...................................................12

NETWORKING TOPOLOGY..........................................................................................................12

PRELIMINARY TESTS AND ASSUMPTIONS..................................................................................14

ACCURACY AND VARIABILITY OF RESULTS...............................................................................14

NETBENCH TEST VALUES..........................................................................................................14

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................18

Appendix.......................................................................................................................19

FILE SERVER HARDWARE AND TUNING PARAMETERS.............................................................19

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION..................................................................................................19

Edison Group, Inc

When CIFS Performance Matters

Business Strategy Report

Edison Group, Inc 1 February 1, 2006

Executive Summary Most networking environments today are comprised of Windows clients and servers. The majority of traffic served across these networks is Microsoft SMB, the built?in Windows file serving protocol. Windows?based servers, functioning in this type of environment, offer the best CIFS performance values. These values can be quantified with benchmarking tools such as NetBench. Real?world networking environments that