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Managing and monitoring the BranchCache configuration

You manage the BranchCache configuration by modifying BranchCache parameters, changing the server secret key, configuring BranchCache to pre-compute hashes, flushing the hash cache, and configuring BranchCache GPOs. You can also display information about BranchCache statistics.

  • Modifying BranchCache configurations
    You can modify the configuration of the BranchCache service on SVMs, including changing the hash store directory path, the hash store maximum directory size, the operating mode, and which BranchCache versions are supported. You can also increase the size of the volume that contains the hash store.
  • Displaying information about BranchCache configurations
    You can display information about BranchCache configurations on storage virtual machines (SVMs), which can be used when verifying a configuration or when determining current settings before modifying a configuration.
  • Changing the BranchCache server key
    You can change the BranchCache server key by modifying the BranchCache configuration on the storage virtual machine (SVM) and specifying a different server key.
  • Pre-computing BranchCache hashes on specified paths
    You can configure the BranchCache service to pre-compute hashes for a single file, for a directory, or for all files in a directory structure. This can be helpful if you want to compute hashes on data in a BranchCache-enabled share during off, non-peak hours.
  • Flushing hashes from the SVM BranchCache hash store
    You can flush all cached hashes from the BranchCache hash store on the storage virtual machine (SVM). This can be useful if you have changed the branch office BranchCache configuration. For example, if you recently reconfigured the caching mode from distributed caching to hosted caching mode, you would want to flush the hash store.
  • Displaying BranchCache statistics
    You can display BranchCache statistics to, among other things, identify how well caching is performing, determine whether your configuration is providing cached content to clients, and determine whether hash files were deleted to make room for more recent hash data.
  • Support for BranchCache Group Policy Objects
    ONTAP BranchCache provides support for BranchCache Group Policy Objects (GPOs), which allow centralized management for certain BranchCache configuration parameters. There are two GPOs used for BranchCache, the Hash Publication for BranchCache GPO and the Hash Version Support for BranchCache GPO.
  • Displaying information about BranchCache Group Policy Objects
    You can display information about the CIFS server's Group Policy Object (GPO) configuration to determine whether BranchCache GPOs are defined for the domain to which the CIFS server belongs and, if so, what the allowed settings are. You can also determine whether BranchCache GPO settings are applied to the CIFS server.