How many assets can a Fotoware system handle?

The maximum theoretical number of assets that a Fotoware system can handle is based on an Index Manager configuration with unions. A union can hold up to 32 indexes, each holding up to 3 million assets, so the theoretical maximum limit is 3 million * 32 = 96 million assets. This also scales well performance-wise because each will run on a separate Index Manager server.

How many assets can one Index Manager Enterprise index?

An Index Manager Enterprise can index up to 3 million assets. All assets can be stored in a single index if required or split across a maximum of 32 indexes on the server. If support for more assets is needed, Index Manager Enterprise can store up to 12 million assets and 128 indexes per server by 'stacking' up to 4 Enterprise licenses on a single server. Each license is valid for 3 million files / 32 indexes.

What happens when an index reaches its 3-million file limit?

When the number of assets nears 3 million files, the log warns that Index Manager will stop indexing. If a system has over 3 million files, consider obtaining another Index Manager Enterprise license to support up to 6 million files.

How many assets can a union hold?

A union does not contain any indexed data - it simply reuses the data extracted in the connected indexes. Therefore, by connecting two Index Manager Enterprise servers with 3 million assets each, for example, a user can connect to the union and search across 6 million assets. 

Unions simply redirect search requests to the member indexes and merge the results. The result is always much smaller than the full index. When a search is made, the reply from an index only contains the first 1000 files. Even if you have 32 member indexes, the union only has to handle 32000 files.

Since the union server is essentially an Index Manager Enterprise, can I run the union on one of the Index Managers that index the archive?

You can use any of the servers as the union server. But the union is more CPU-intensive than the Indexes and would benefit from a different configuration:

• Index servers need a high-speed disk and lots of memory.
• Union server needs high-speed CPUs.

Based on this, a separate union server would be recommended for a very large archive. Running the union on a separate server also gives you additional modes of fault tolerance.

What are the implications of virtualizing Index Manager?

Index Manager can be virtualized, as is often done for maintenance reasons. However, a common mistake is to run too many virtualized Index Managers on a single host. There should be enough physical memory and CPU to match the sum of VMs running on the host. Over-committing resources on the host will result in sluggish and unpredictable performance.