Tip of the Day: Closer look at ODX

Today’s Tip…

We’ve talked about ODX (Offloaded Data Transfer) in previous tips.  This is a functionality that was added as part of Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2.  Imagine a very large file that was located on a SAN.  If that file were to be copied to another location, but still on the same SAN, instead of copying the file up to Windows and potentially to another instance of Windows (across the network), the SAN would take over this operation.  Neither Windows nor the common network would need to touch the actual file.  The advantage would be a much faster file copy since it is handled solely by the SAN.

That being said, there really isn’t a user interface for this.  So other than the observation that the file copy is much faster, there isn’t a way to check that ODX is indeed functioning.

The good news is that one of my coworkers, Shasank Prasad, worked up a blog entry to help demystify this and demonstrate a method of checked that ODX is functioning. 

https://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2014/06/26/is-offloaded-data-transfers-odx-working.aspx

I highly recommend that anyone interested in ODX take the time to review this blog.