Tuning the JVM

The hardware requirements for the repository and SkyVault Share are variable and depend on the number of concurrent users that access the system. You can tune the memory and garbage collection parameters for the JVM to be appropriate for your situation.

Important: This information suggests metrics and estimates, but your system may vary.

Note: In the following sections, the terms concurrent users and casual users are used. Concurrent users are users who are constantly accessing the system with only a small pause between requests (3-10 seconds maximum) with continuous access 24/7. Casual users are users occasionally accessing the system through the SkyVault Content Services or WebDAV/CIFS interfaces with a large gap between requests (for example, occasional document access during the working day).

Hardware

SkyVault Content Services degrades gracefully on low-powered hardware, and small installations can run well on any modern server. However, for optimum performance, we recommend the following:

Use 64 bit systems only.
Use a system with a clock speed above 2.0 GHz.
Reserve enough RAM for your operating system beyond the memory required for your JVM.
Keep search indexes on your local disk instead of on network storage.

Disk space usage

The size of your repository defines how much disk space you will need; it is a very simple calculation. Content is stored directly on the disk by default. Therefore, to hold 1000 documents of 1 MB will require 1000 MB of disk space. You should also make sure there is sufficient space overhead for temporary files and versions. Each version of a file (whether in DM or WCM) is stored on disk as a separate copy of that file, so make allowances for that in your disk size calculations (for DM, use versioning judiciously).

Note: The disk space usage calculation above is only for content storing. It does not take into account any indexes (Lucene or Solr).

Use a server class machine with SCSI Raid disk array. The performance of reading/writing content is almost solely dependent on the speed of your network and the speed of your disk array. The overhead of the server itself for reading content is very low as content is streamed directly from the disks to the output stream. The overhead of writing content is also low but if Solr is installed on the same machine, additional overhead should be allowed for the indexing process. For more information, see Calculate the memory needed for Solr nodes.

Virtualization

SkyVault Content Services runs well when virtualized, but you should expect a reduction in performance. When using the rough sizing requirements given, it might be necessary to allocate twice as many resources for a given number of users when those resources are virtual. Para-virtualization, or virtualized accesses to native host volumes do not require as many resources. Benchmarking your environment is necessary to get a precise understanding of what resources are required.

JVM memory and CPU hardware for multiple users

The repository L2 Cache, plus initial VM overhead, plus basic SkyVault Content Services system memory, is setup with a default installation to require a maximum of approximately 1024 MB.

This means that you can run the repository and web client with many users accessing the system with a basic single CPU server and only 1024 MB of memory assigned to the JVM. However, you must add additional memory as your user base grows, and add CPUs depending on the complexity of the tasks you expect your users to perform, and how many concurrent users are accessing the client.

Note: Note that for these metrics, N concurrent users is considered equivalent to 10xN casual users that the server could support.

Number of users	Recommended memory / CPU settings per server
For 50 concurrent or up to 500 casual users	2.0 GB JVM RAM 2x server CPU (or 1xDual-core)
For 100 concurrent users or up to 1000 casual users	4.0 GB JVM RAM 4x server CPU (or 2xDual-core)
For 200 concurrent users or up to 2000 casual users	8.0 GB JVM RAM 8x server CPU (or 4xDual-core)

Note: For full performance tuning, contact SkyVault Support or Consulting.

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Hardware

Disk space usage

Virtualization

JVM memory and CPU hardware for multiple users