Introduction to the BranchCache Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

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The BranchCache™ Management Pack (version 6.1.7600.0) provides an overall manageability solution for health monitoring and performance reporting for the BranchCache feature available in Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008 R2.

BranchCache is a content caching and retrieval framework designed to reduce branch office WAN link utilization. To optimize WAN bandwidth, BranchCache copies content from your main office content servers and caches the content at branch office locations, allowing client computers at branch offices to access the content locally rather than over the WAN. BranchCache has two modes of operation: distributed cache mode and hosted cache mode. When the content cache at a branch office is distributed among client computers, BranchCache is running in distributed cache mode. When the content cache at a branch office is hosted on a server computer, BranchCache is running in hosted cache mode.

See BranchCache on Microsoft TechNet for detailed technical information about BranchCache operation and architecture.

The BranchCache Management Pack, used within System Center Operations Manager, provides monitoring and reporting solutions to IT professionals and administrators at both the branch office level and the system level. Health monitoring provides administrators a central view of the overall BranchCache system health, covering the entire branch office and each client or hosted cache server. Performance reporting collects and aggregates the bandwidth utilization information recorded by each peer, including the bytes retrieved from the peer caches or hosted caches (bandwidth saved) and bytes retrieved from the content server at the main office (bandwidth not saved) to provide a view of the benefit and cost savings achieved by BranchCache.

Getting the latest management pack and documentation

You can find the BranchCache Management Pack in the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Catalog.

What's New (version 6.1.7600.0)

The following features are new in this release of the BranchCache Management Pack:

  • Monitoring and reporting for the Windows BranchCache feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

  • A diagram view of the entire BranchCache deployment

  • A branch-centric view, with automatic discovery of branch offices using hosted cache mode and branch offices using distributed cache mode

  • Reports, including a reporting management pack to generate bandwidth usage and bandwidth saving reports for selected branch offices or nodes

  • Automatic discovery of content servers, including BranchCache-enabled Web servers running Internet Information Services (IIS) and BranchCache-enabled file servers using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol

  • Health monitoring for BranchCache nodes of all types: hosted cache servers, hosted cache clients, distributed cache clients, and BranchCache-capable content servers (file servers and servers running IIS).

  • Health rollup for each branch offices using hosted cache mode and branch offices using distributed cache mode

  • Tasks to display current configuration status, perform common resolution steps, and change common configuration options

  • Performance counter views to allow real-time performance collection on bandwidth consumption information