A company just underwent a merger. The new environment includes hundreds of branch office locations running Windows servers. The company needs…

NetApp Global File Cache (GFC) is the technology specifically designed for this use case. It centralizes unstructured data from distributed locations onto a central NetApp ONTAP system (on-premises or in the cloud). At each branch office, a software-based "Edge" instance is deployed on a Windows Server, which intelligently caches only the active data set. This approach consolidates branch office storage infrastructure, centralizes data management and protection, and provides users with transparent, LAN-speed access to their files as if the data were still local.

A. BlueXP replication: This refers to SnapMirror technology managed via the BlueXP control plane. It is primarily for asynchronous data replication for disaster recovery, not for providing active, cached file access at branch offices.

C. FlexCache: This is a volume-level caching technology used between ONTAP clusters. It is not designed as a lightweight, software-based solution to replace hundreds of individual Windows file servers in branch offices.

D. Cloud Volumes ONTAP: This is a cloud-based ONTAP instance. While it can serve as the central data repository (the "Core"), it is not the technology that enables the caching and consolidation at the branch office itself.

1. NetApp Global File Cache Solution Brief, SB-4023-0321, Page 2, "The NetApp Global File Cache Solution": "Eliminate the challenges of distributed data by consolidating your data into a single repository in the data center or in the cloud. At the same time, you can maintain transparent access to your data from any of your remote or branch offices without affecting the user experience."

2. NetApp Technical Report, TR-4812: NetApp Global File Cache Architecture and Design, Page 5, Section 1.1 "What Is Global File Cache?": "NetApp Global File Cache is a software-based solution that provides transparent data access and centralized file locking for a globally distributed enterprise. The solution is composed of a centralized, highly available NetApp ONTAP cluster (the core) and a set of software instances (the edges) that are deployed in distributed offices."

3. NetApp Technical Report, TR-4743: FlexCache in ONTAP, Page 6, Section 2.1 "FlexCache Use Cases": This document describes FlexCache use cases such as "Remote office data access" and "WAN acceleration," but specifies it is for caching entire volumes between ONTAP systems, which is a heavier solution than GFC and less suited for consolidating hundreds of individual file servers. GFC is the purpose-built solution for the described scenario.