Whilst wandering the show floor here at Interop NY, I've bumped into a few things, but I'm going to milk them for multiple posts. First, there's WAFS. Wide Area File System in case you're wondering what the acronym stands for. It's supposed to be an industry standard by now, but hasn't evolved fast enough to make that a reality. In fact, there's pretty much no specific technology as long as you achieve one or m Whilst wandering the show floor here at Interop NY, I’ve bumped into a few things, but I’m going to milk them for multiple posts. First, there’s WAFS. Wide Area File System in case you’re wondering what the acronym stands for. It’s supposed to be an industry standard by now, but hasn’t evolved fast enough to make that a reality. In fact, there’s pretty much no specific technology as long as you achieve one or more of WAFS’ goals.So for now, we’re talking proprietary. But if you’re okay with sticking to one vendor for your file system (pretty safe compared to other parts of your network), Availl‘s version of WAFS is pretty impressive.The idea behind WAFS is to do full file replication across servers at multiple locations, regardless of WAN speed or security hurdles. For the most part, Availl seems to have made that work…with some caveats. First, it’s software only and restricted to managing NTFS files systems. Install the Availl central server (which acts as a traffic cop and license monitor) and you can manage any number of files for $2,500 per server. A mite pricey, but even for small businesses, this has benefits.First, it doesn’t care about bandwidth, firewalls, VPNs, whatever. As long as the target server has an Availl agent installed and can see the central server, you’re good. Second, it incoroporates enough version control to get by even out of the box. If user A opens the file WEENIE.DOC in London and User B tries to open the same file at the same time or a few microseconds later, the traffic will determine who got there first and show the file as read-only to the second dude. Meantime, the system will keep all your files in sync across all your NTFS file stores. Plus, it can do it as full multi-directional (meaning all files are accessible to users at all locations and changes updated across all targets) or as uni-directional, also known as “backup.” Databases are supported, but only SQL-based data stores. I’d watch that claim, however, as I’ve never had luck syncing or backing up databases using software or services that didn’t specifically support the database I was working on. We’ll see more WAFS coming from other vendors soon. Cisco was supposed to be building an appliance, but I lost track of where that is. And smaller vendors like Yellow Box said they were going to incorporate it as soon as a Linux version was stable enough. No idea when that might be. Meantime, a more proprietary solution like Availl’s probably costs a bit more, but the numbers aren’t nuts and the bennies look worth it. Technology Industry