THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:
- EFT Server (All Versions)
QUESTION
How much storage space does the ARM database require?
ANSWER
Database capacity planning can be very simple or very complex depending on the needs and size of the organization. Space requirements for transactions depend on estimated EFT Server activity, number of users, installed modules, number of Event Rules defined/enabled, and many other factors.
3GB minimum hard drive space is recommended for the initial database size.
Space requirements for transactions depend on estimated EFT Server activity, number of users, installed modules, Event Rules, and so on. A general estimate is 3MB to 5 MB per 1000 files uploaded.
A good database maintenance plan is important to keeping space requirements to a minimum (aging/archiving/warehousing/truncating old data).
For better database performance, follow the standard SQL/Oracle tuning guidelines in their user documentation.
If you are using SQL Server for your EFT database, refer to the MSDN article Creating Compressed Tables and Indexes.
The following are guidelines for maintaining the good health of an EFT and DMZ Gateway deployment and reducing long-term costs of maintenance and operation.
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Configuration Backup - For disaster recovery and business continuity, it is important to keep backups of EFT and DMZ Gateway configuration. Backing up the configuration can be accomplished with a variety of tools such as Symantec Backup Exec, Ghost / VMWare to make images of the system, or even a simple script file.
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Database Backup and Truncation - If you are using the Auditing and Reporting module (ARM), the database to which the audit records are stored should include EFT ARM tables as part of the typical database maintenance plan. This includes proper monitoring of the tables and transaction logs, backing up the data and having a retention policy to archive (or purge) old data.
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Data Archival and Retention - You should put into place and enforce a policy by which old data is periodically archived and/or purged, because no disk is limitless and performance can degenerate as more files are added to EFT. Therefore, a storage management policy should include regular inspection of available hard disk space and health (error count, fragmentation, etc.) as well as archiving and/or purging user data and Server Log Files (CMDOUT.log found in the application folder, and all other logs found in the Log folder specified on EFT).
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Restarting Services - Given the facility of the Microsoft Cluster in failing over and failing back while providing high resource availability, it is recommended that you design a maintenance schedule in which the EFT service is cycled at least once per quarter to once per month. Failing over to the backup node, restarting the service, then failing back and restarting the other node would suffice in re-establishing a baseline state of the EFT service to ensure optimal health.
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Event Log Alerting - EFT will log error conditions to the standard Windows Event Viewer. It is recommended that the operations team for an enterprise include EFT error checks in their monitoring techniques, looking for an ERROR event generated with a source of EFT or Globalscape.
Also refer to the following GlobalSCAPE Knowledge Base articles:
MORE INFORMATION
We used the following procedure to determine the general estimate of 3 MB to 5MB per 1000 files uploaded:
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Executed the built-in stored procedure sp_spaceused and recorded the initial database size. (The “reserved” column indicates how much data is in the database.)
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Ran 20000 file uploads via scripted CuteFTP.
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Executed the built-in stored procedure sp_spaceused and recorded the final database size.
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Subtracted the initial size from the final size and divided the result by the number of transactions.