AppFabric Cache for large files

Question

Hi, I'd need a solution like AppFabric to store large files (up to 500 MB) on multiple servers.

I briefly explain the context: there is a central server (let's call it CS) where users upload files. These files may be consumed by devices which connect to other servers (let's call them RS1...RSn). The problem is that the bandwidth between RSs and CS is limited, and many (large) files could be uploaded by several users. When devices connect to RSs, the files should be locally available so that they could be transferred without the CS-RSx connection bottleneck. Multiple devices could download the same file from the same RSx or even from different RSs, that's why I call it a "cache". Anyway a sort of prefetch (pushing files from CS to RSs) would be preferable.

Is there a way to directly use AppFabric for this purpose or is there any valid alternative? I doubt there is any out-of-the-box component which does both caching and prefetching, anyway I would need a partial temporary solution to start with.

Thank you

Answer 1

I don't think AppFabric's what you're looking for here, I think you'd be better off looking into file replication between the central and remote servers. That Wikipedia page mentions bandwidth throttling, which would fit in with your scenario of having limited bandwidth available between the servers, and I think it'll do the sort of prefetch you're looking for.