Windows 7 Features: Branch Cache
Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 1:41AM One of the new features aimed at businesses is Branch Cache. Branch Cache allows content from remote file servers and web servers to be cashed locally in the branch office. The neat thing is that the data can be cashed on a local sever (Hosted Cache) or can be distributed across Windows 7 client PCs (Distributed Cache).
This means that an employee can download a file stored on the company's intranet at the central office to their computer in a branch office. This file can then be stored using Branch Cache on a server in the branch office so that other users can download it locally on their faster LAN instead of having to go over the slower WAN connection back to the central office.
Branch Cache has a number of configuration options, here are a few examples. You can set permissions so that only authorized users can access the files, files can expire after a set amount of time so that a fresh copy would have to be pulled again from it's original location and you can set the size of the Branch Cache partition on the clients.
The focus for Branch Cache is on the intranet for now and it supports HTTP and SMB traffic. The requirements for Branch Cache to work is it requires Windows 7 for the clients and requires Windows Server 2008 R2 for the servers.
Here is a great video from Microsoft Technet Edge of more details on Branch Cache as well as a demonstration of Branch Cache in action. The original page for the video can be found here.
Branch Cache, Windows 7 in Windows 
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Reader Comments (1)
This is powerful. It will be even more useful when it supports Internet content. We want to use this for training content at our schools (branch offices). The training content will mostly be video but will not all be stored on our network. Some will be purchased and housed externally on the web. That, as I understand it, will not be able to take advantage of the branch caching.