Workloads are becoming more data-intensive with every passing day thanks to big data analytics, machine learning, database management, and large file transfers. But these kinds of data-intensive tasks can lead to poor performance across a network, increasing the time needed to access critical information.
Data-reliant enterprises need an easy-to-implement solution that improves performance and prevents data transfer bottlenecks. A fast server message block (SMB) technology does just that. It cuts the time spent waiting on data transfers, freeing you up to attend to more valuable tasks.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what an SMB server is and how it helps you to directly access large amounts of data from across a network without errors or delays.
Why data transfers are slowing down
The first step to understanding why SMB matters is to look at the current state of data transfers. Many businesses are facing a huge increase in the amount of data they need to store and process, all of which needs to be accessible across various network environments.
The infrastructure of IT solutions often struggles to deal with the sheer amount of data being pushed across the network. Transfers can be slow and, in the worst case, not happen at all. When dealing with this amount of data, any solutions that improve speed and reliability are a big help. Network-hardware cooperation is essential to get the most out of your storage hardware investments. This is where SMB can be the star of the show.
Understanding why SMB is important
When your data exists on a remote server and you need access to it, you use a remote connection. Any hiccup in the relationship between the network, the SMB server, and the storage hardware means that the data living on that storage hardware could become inaccessible, or accessing it could take so long that it creates delays.
We like to think of this as a three-layer sandwich. The performance of all three layers – the top network layer, the middle SMB layer, and the bottom storage layer – impacts how easily and efficiently you access your data.
The traditional view is that transport protocols are always the bottleneck, but this is an outdated way of thinking. By focusing on the SMB, you can implement several key features that improve performance. Building your system to ensure high performance in both the network architecture and the features it includes is an important time-saving consideration to ensure fast data transfers.
SMB acts as the link between networks and storage, enabling the following features: In essence, SMB server technology is vital for facilitating easy, secure, and efficient resource sharing in networks of all sizes.
About Tuxera’s SMB offering
Fusion File Share by Tuxera™ is a high-performance, scalable SMB server that runs on Linux and provides access to unstructured file-based data over a network.
Fusion File Share brings support for Microsoft’s SMB protocol to public cloud platform-as-a-service offerings, software-defined storage solutions, high-performance computing applications, and enterprise-grade network-attached storage.
Fusion has all the latest security and SMB capabilities to suit even the most demanding organizational needs. It enables transfers of up to 11.5 GB/s in 100 Gbit/s (12.5 GB/s) networks – instead of the 2.5 GB/s that is the common limit for open-source SMB alternatives.
Whatever industry you work in, solving the problem of network performance means less time wasted waiting for data transfers and more time spent doing valuable work.