Using LDT across wide area network

[miachel1234sw]

We have four offices. Each office has a file server. A project, in its entirety, is saved only on one server. That means all the files for a project are saved on one server in one office at a time.

In the past we used to move a project from one office (server) to another depending on where the majority of the work was being done.

We now have a large project that needs to be shared among all four offices.

Presently, our offices are connected with a T1 line. This has worked fine for AutoCAD as long as the drawing, including xrefs, that is being opened is under 20MB. The time to open and save is a little slow but otherwise it works fine.

If we open any drawing in LDT and try access the database everything slows to a crawl.

Is anyone out there trying to share LDT projects across a wide area network (WAN)?
How have you accomplished this?

Thanks
Miachel

[grachel21]

I am not sure what you mean by LDT project, but we have been struggling with the concept of multiple office project sharing for some time now. Originally we began by keeping multilple copies of files on multiple servers, this was obviously not a good idea. We eventually graduated to using Microsoft file replication to keep project directories synched between multiple servers. This system worked ok, but required a a lot of admin time managing the files and who can edit what. We have most recently implemented Autodesk product "Vault". The product works well for managing editing rights and monitoring access to files, but only after some additional hardware and quite a bit of training within our organization. The main problem we have seen with Vault is increased file problems and crashes, not all of which can be linked directly to Vault, but it certainly seemed to increase the more we used it. We have also recently implemented an "Avail" replication system on our servers. So far we are using it only to replicate our standards files; menus, lisp, Isogen projects, and symbol libraries, we have yet to try it on a project.

File sharing is a major issue in our organization and I would also be curios to hear how others are managing data, and job sharing between multiple offices.

[miachel1234sw]

Some related queries are like:

Do you use a T1 or T3 connection or something else?
Do you use any third-party software to assist in file management or replication?
Do you have any access speed problems?

Thanks
Miachel

[grachel21]

Are you running any kind of network accelerator like the Riverbed Steelheads?

Have you had your WAN evaluated?

[miachel1234sw]

We have evaluated our WAN but still facing the issues like network congestion and bandwidth choking.

Any alternate solution?

[sdavis_199]

Since we also faced similar issues, we have also had our WAN evaluated and have used 80k worth of hardware from Juniper's product on a test run. There was definitely noticeable improvements but still not enough to solve our problems. It is my opinion that there is still no economical way to share or open CAD files across a WAN. Maybe some day??

[grachel21]

We did some testing and Steelheads increased WAN speeds about 5x the first time a file is accessed (this is still about half the speed of the LAN). The second time you access the same file, the speed is comparable to the LAN as long as the file is still cached.

Moreover, a comparative cost analysis showed that paying for bandwidth upgrade every month would cost us much higher than paying for Riverbed’s one-time costs.

[miachel1234sw]

Thanks for your suggestions, would definitely explore the option of Steelheads.

If you could also provide some more information, it might be beneficial.


Thanks

[miachel1234sw]

Since the market review is demonstrating irrefutable response for Riverbed's Steelhead Appliances, we are looking forward to deploy that.

Rather, their team is already being called upon for demo.

[miachel1234sw]

Eventually, we have deployed Riverbed Steelheads.

The product was incredibly simple to install, and has exceeded our expectations in terms of both bandwidth efficiency and latency improvements. Moreover, Riverbed has great technical support – extremely knowledgeable and very responsive.