About remote site caches

Because Meridian Enterprise is a centralized system, optimizing performance for remote users with modest available bandwidth can be a challenge, particularly if the users work with large files or many external references. Meridian provides a variety of features to help meet this challenge, including Remote and Offline modes for the PowerUser client and a browser-based web client. If a group of Meridian Web Client users work in proximity to a web server that is geographically closer to them than the Meridian Web Access server, a remote site cache can be installed and configured on their local web server. Remote site caches support the Online and Remote modes of the Meridian Web Client but do not support Offline mode or the PowerUser client.

The site cache will temporarily store documents that the users work with so that they do not have to be downloaded from the central server every time. The system response and performance for viewing documents is greatly improved, comparable to if the users were local to the Meridian server. The site cache manager automatically maintains the cache with the Meridian server transparently in the background. Old documents can be removed from the cache to make space for newer documents. Multiple site caches can be configured to serve separate groups of users that each have a local web server.

Note    New documents created by remote users are sent immediately to the Meridian Web Access server and stored in the vault. Copies of the documents are added to the site cache for future access. Imported documents are sent to the vault per the Upload documents option described in Configuring a remote site cache. 

System requirements

• A web server at the remote site with one of the Internet Information Services versions installed that are listed in the Supported Software document for this release of Meridian. The minimum IIS components that must be installed for proper operation are described in Server role requirements.

  Note    If the Request Filtering feature option Allow unlisted file name extensions is disabled in IIS Manager, the following file extensions must be added to the File Name Extensions list and allowed: .dll,.gif,.png,.js,.css.

• Adequate free disk space for the cached documents and metadata.

The following topics describe the configuration of remote site caches.