| This section will discuss general best practice throughput recommendations, which is defined as the process for measuring data transfer rate. It is very difficult to plan for optimal performance for your specific environment; many considerations must be considered , such as the characteristics that make up the profile of activity you expect from your end user community. This profile will have an impact on your recommendations on how you plan for maximum throughput and resource consumption. Ultimately, all these considerations will determine the server hardware and storage that will accommodate your particular portal infrastructure. NOTE Microsoft has already performed extensive testing and capacity planning for SharePoint, and they have published a detailed recommendations document. The document is called "Capacity Planning for SharePoint Portal Server" and is located at http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint.
In general, best practice maximum throughput recommendations and important considerations are as follows in Table 6.6. Table 6.6. Best Practice Performance Metrics | Function | Recommended Maximum | Description | | Documents per server | 500,000 | The maximum number of documents per server has a dependency on the number of document versions. With the assumption of an average of two versions per document, the maximum documents per server is 500,000. If the average versions per document were four, the recommended maximum would be 250,000. | | Document versions | 1,000,000 | Each document may have multiple document versions, with a maximum of 1,000,000. | | Versions per document | 1,000 | The maximum recommended number of versions per document is 1,000. However, keep in mind that the total number of document versions is 1,000,000. | | Document profiles | 500 | Even though document profiles have minimal impact on server performance, the maximum recommended number of document profiles is 500. | | Categories | 500 | The maximum number of suggested categories per server is 500. | | Number of documents per folder or category | 200 | While the maximum recommended number of documents per folder is 200, it is important to note that a folder could store up to 3,000 documents. However, the time it takes to render Web browser pages for more than 200 files is usually unacceptable. | | Average number of role principals | 150 “600 | The maximum number of role principals per folder can vary depending on the role. The maximum number of role principals is restricted by the maximum size of a security descriptor, which is 64KB. The maximum number of coordinators is 150, and the maximum number of readers is 600. Since role principals could consist of groups, a large number of users could be granted access to a document. | | Average file size | 50MB | The maximum recommended document size is 50MB. | | Number of subscriptions | 100,000 | Even with minimal impact on server performance, the maximum recommended number of subscriptions per workspace is 100,000. | | Content Sources | 100 | The maximum recommended number of content sources is 100. | | Documents included within the index | 3,500,000 | Due to memory constraints, the maximum recommended number of documents included in the index is 3.5 million per server. Memory is consumed due to database cache growth to support searches over both full-text and document metadata. | The number of documents per server, which is dependant on the average number of document versions, is the same regardless of the number of workspaces on the server. This means that if a server consisting of several workspaces requires storage for one million document versions, then this limitation applies to the aggregate of all workspaces combined, not just a single workspace.  |
