Santa Clara, California-based Network Appliance Inc has teamed with Needham, Massachusetts-based WebSpective Software (CI No 3,442) to bring replication, synchronization and consolidated web access log data to its NetCache appliance (CI No 3,534). WebSpective provides its content replication and application management software to large web sites. Through this deal, it hopes to expand its market reach into the providers of web hosting services. In traditional multi-web-server environments, companies tend to tackle web traffic problems by mirroring content on multiple servers in different geographical locations. The downside to this approach is the high level of administration required to maintain the servers, not to mention the upfront cost. Adding WebSpective’s replication and mirroring software to NetApp’s NetCache means the content of the cache can be updated regularly, eliminating the need for the cache to waste time by checking whether the requested content has changed. As new content comes online, it is always synchronized with caches, said WebSpective VP of product strategy Swapnil Shah, which means there’s a guarantee of fresh content across the board… There’s also a hidden benefit. We are significantly reducing the amount of bandwidth usage since we are informing the cache of changes. Webmasters should also be able to exercise more control over cache content – for example, if an already-published press release turns out to have an error in it, all the content provider has to do is flush the cache. Finally, WebSpective allows a combined cache-and-server environment to record hits as if it were a single server. The software directs web server access logs to a central relational database. That gives the content provider a consistent view of all accesses, Shah explained.
