Windows 2008 branchcache

To use this feature, you must be running Server R2 on the file servers or Web servers whose content is to be cached, and Windows 7 on the client systems in the branch office. If you decide to cache content in the branch office on a server instead of on clients, then that server, too, must be running Server R2. In distributed mode, which to me is at least conceptually far less desirable, the Windows 7 clients do the initial caching of requested data, and they also do the sharing of that data to other Windows 7 clients making subsequent requests for the same content.

Distributed mode can only work across one subnet in the branch location and it obviously breaks down when clients containing cached content go to sleep or are powered down.

Windows 7 clients requesting data from a central office get identifiers instead of actual data, then the clients check with the BranchCache server to see if the data is there from a previous lookup. Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. In future versions of Windows, Microsoft might remove the netsh functionality for BranchCache.

Microsoft recommends that you transition to Windows PowerShell if you currently use netsh to configure and manage BranchCache and other networking technologies. When a client computer that is running Windows 8 downloads content from a file server or web server that is running Windows Server and is using new Data Deduplication technology, there is no need for BranchCache to spend CPU cycles calculating how to divide the content — because the file server and web server have already made these calculations.

Duplicate content is stored once and downloaded once. When identical content exists in a file — or across many files on the content server or hosted cache server — BranchCache stores only one instance of the content, which provides disk storage savings. In addition, client computers at office locations download only one instance of duplicate content, saving additional WAN bandwidth. Small changes to large files produce bandwidth savings.

BranchCache now divides files and web pages into smaller pieces. BranchCache uses a highly optimized file server chunking system to choose intelligent split points inside of files, providing the ability for client computers to download only the part of the file that is changed.

Offline creation of content information. When you deploy a BranchCache enabled file server or Web server as a content server, content information is calculated offline, well before a BranchCache client requests a file. This provides faster performance and more bandwidth savings, because content information is ready for the first client that requests the content and calculations have already been performed.

Cache Encryption. Cached data is now stored encrypted by default. This allows you to ensure data security without using drive encryption technologies. Cache preloading.

New tools are available that allow you to load cacheable content onto hosted cache servers before the content is requested by client computers. You can preload content from media, such as DVDs or hard disks, or you can transfer the content over the network to the hosted cache server.

This enables scripting and remote management of BranchCache content servers, hosted cache servers, and client computers. In addition to these improvements, the following improvements to hosted cache mode and hosted cache servers are included in Windows Server Deployment of multiple hosted cache servers.

In the previous version of BranchCache, you were able to deploy only one hosted cache server per office location. Windows Server provides the ability to scale hosted cache mode deployments for offices of any size by allowing you to deploy as many hosted cache servers as are needed at a location.

Improved database performance. This allows a single hosted cache server to keep up with the demands of more people while using the same hardware. It also allows a hosted cache server to store significantly more data on the order of terabytes , which is necessary to provide high optimization for large organizations. No server certificate requirement. Previously, hosted cache servers were required to have a server certificate that was issued by a certification authority CA that client computers at the office location trusted.

SCCM only supports distributed cache mode. When we find BranchCache enabled we use it — there is no special SCCM configuration requirements for BranchCache other than what is likely in se in most environments anyway. We will highlight those shortly but to start a diagram of a sample configuration might help explain how this is all setup.

In the diagram we have 4 systems. We have mentioned already that to support BranchCache we need to use a Windows R2 system — but what about clients? The first time content is requested from the distribution point the client has no choice but to retrieve it across the latent network. Once retrieved the content is stored by BranchCache. When the second client attempts to retrieve the content it detects a latent network and sends out a request for any peers with the content.

The first client responds and serves up the content thus avoiding the need to pull it across from the distribution point. OK, so we have the general concept of how it works — so how do we set it up? Both of these settings are common in most environments and are all that is required on the SCCM side.

So how do we configure BranchCache on the OS side? Just a few settings to configure. In Server Manager, select features and add the BranchCache feature.

There is no configuration here — the feature is either on or off. Once installed you will see it in the feature list. Next, we have to configure BranchCache on our clients. This can be done through local policy on each system or — much easier — through domain policy. On my domain controller I open the group policy management console. Editing the properties of the GPO we have two places to configure. First, is BranchCache policy. Here we enable BranchCcache, set distributed cache mode, define the speed that we consider to be a latent network default 80 ms and configure the percentage of disk space to allocate to BranchCache activity.