Preformance with a lot of small files

[dmmackay]

I have been using PowerFolder for a couple months now with non mission critical data (Shared templates, Reports, etc..) across seven locations via VPN and love it. It has been working flawlessly. I have production data (the actual client files) that I have been using some other software (Syncback) to sync each night to all my offices. I am considering switching them to PowerFolder but wondering what performance would be like on this scale.

I have just under 200,000 files, across 250 folders. Total size is approx 4.5 gigs. On average about 100 files change per day in each office. What kind of resources (Ram/Proc) would that eat up on each server in each office. I have 4 larger offices that have there own server that Powerfolder runs on that I am not to concerned over, but 3 of the offices are smaller and staff actually use the computer with PowerFolder running on them.

Also, if a file changes in two locations, I assume it just takes the latest version?

I am posting this here to get both devs and hopefully some user opinions who may be in this scenerio.

Thanks in advance, great product. I just canceled my Syncplicity account in favor of PowerFolder for home use as well.

Mike

[Hannibal]

Please don't mind that I copy my answers here too:

Thanks for your trust in PowerFolder.
We run PowerFolder as clustered Online Backup solution with multiple server machines forming a storage cloud. Each server handles up to 5000 folders and over 1 million files with a size of about 1 TB.
For this server configuration we require about 2 to 4 GB RAM per server machine (at 1 million files)

You can expect to require 512 MB to 1 GB if you plan to manage 200,000 files per server.
For smaller number of files less memory is used.
I would like to point out the following wiki article about memory use: http://wiki.powerfolder.com/wiki/Memory_configuration

For the clients, that need to run PowerFolder in the background I recommend to setup
a scheduled synchronization at night. This prevents disk access during the work hours.
http://www.powerfolder.com/wiki/Scheduled_synchronization

The size or number of folders don't really affect CPU / RAM.

> Also, if a file changes in two locations, I assume it just takes the latest version?

Yes. It then takes the file with the newest modification date. Make sure clocks are correct.

Best regards,
Christian