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GlobalSCAPE Knowledge Base

Safe Operating Limits

Karla Marsh
EFT

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:
  • EFT v7.4.x and later

DISCUSSION

The following is a list of EFT object types and their maximum safe operating limits. These limits were derived from numerous quality assurance tests conducted on server hardware that meets our recommended system requirements. (Refer to the help documentation for your version of EFT.)

As mentioned above, this article discusses LIMITS of the software as determined by QA tests. Various external limitations are outside of the control of EFT and can affect performance within your environment. Refer to Globalscape Recommendations for High Performance for details of the limitations (such as network, disk I/O, memory, CPU, antivirus, Windows updates) and how to overcome them.

Upon service startup, EFT v8.0.5.7 and later will do a count of these objects and write a warning to the Windows Event Log and WARN log to eft.log if a limit is exceeded.

It may be possible to exceed these safe operational limits to a significant degree if the underlying hardware is improved; however, as objects increase, and depending on their composition and configuration, risk of adverse performance will also increase.

Globalscape will attempt to support, but cannot guarantee remedial action to hangs, crashes, or slow operations that are or appear to be a by-product of exceeding maximum safe operating limits as defined here. In v8.0.5 and later, a limits.json file is available in the \ProgramData\Globalscape\EFT Server Enterprise folder.

If you find yourself exceeding these limits, we recommend reaching out to us. Sometimes we can recommend configurations that achieve your same business goals in a more streamlined fashion. For example, crafting a single generic event rule for handling a file upload from multiple partners, rather than one rule per partner.

The performance of the computer/virtual machine on which EFT is running is the key to reaching upper limits. Reaching max EFT limits requires a powerful computer, such as 16 logical processors, SSD disks, and so on.

The count of the objects is the entries shown in the SiteConfig.db, not what is shown in the administration interface. That is, if the entry exists in the DB file it will be counted towards the limit. The underlying database is more detailed than the administration interface, such as including all paths for a given virtual folder.

EFT Object

Safe Operating Limits

Server Groups

4

Server objects

10

Sites

10 per Server object

Settings Templates

10 per Site

Users

1,000,000 across all Sites and Settings Templates

Administration accounts

24

Permissions (VFS)

See VFS entries

Folders (VFS)

See VFS entries

VFS entries

100,000

Permission Groups

100 per Site

Objects viewable from the Web Transfer Client/ Workspaces

1,000 files and folders (total)

Object uploads from the Web Transfer Client/ Workspaces

100 files and folders (total) at a time

Characters in a directory path

255 (limitation includes the drive letter, colon, backslash, directories, subdirectories, filename, and extension)

Event Rules

4,000 per Site

Folder Monitors and Timers 1,000 per Server (see note below)

Commands

1,000 per Site

AWE tasks

1,000 per Site

Number of entries in a report

1,000 per Server object

Number of RAM agents

1,000 per Site

Connection Profiles 1,000 per Site

We do not recommend running more than 60 Monitor-style triggers (which by default rely on Windows’ notifications vs. polling) depending on anticipated throughput (number of files arriving, frequency, size, I/O speeds, network latency etc.). If you need to monitor hundreds or thousands of folders, then we recommend either using Timer-style triggers or switch your Folder Monitor triggers from notification mode to polling mode, as you can set a more relaxed polling schedule vs. real-time Windows notifications.
Likewise, Folder Monitors should never be used for monitoring files uploaded by protocols, as there is a specific event trigger type for that purpose: File Upload trigger. Using Folder Monitors for file uploads may result in a downstream race condition due to how Windows notifies based on chunks vs. whole file uploads.

Details
Last Modified: 5 Months Ago
Last Modified By: kmarsh
Type: INFO
Rated 2 stars based on 14 votes.
Article has been viewed 39K times.
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