Capacity Planning & Forecasting

[tarik2013]

Hey Guys,

I am fairly new to Alfresco and am interested in using the Community version but have a few questions that I'm seeking answers to:

1) Can I transition to a Supported plan whilst using Community version if I choose to at a later point?
2) If yes, what would be the cost? If it is user based - approximately 500 users
3) What is the maximum users that this version can accomodate?
4) Is there an option for bulk user upload?
5) What is the largest file size that can be uploaded using this version?
6) What is the maximum amount of documents that can be maintained in the system?
7) What is the maximum storgage for the Community Version?
😎 Can I make an 'archived' document available to a specific user or set of users?
9) Are any programming skills required for implementation and subsequent maintenance?
10) Does the Community have workflow for document circulation? [saw this on the website - but just want to know  
    for certain if this applies to Community]
11) If yes, what programming skills are required to configure / operate the workflow?
12) Will users be able to see a list or matrix of related documents?

[jpotts]

<blockquote>1) Can I transition to a Supported plan whilst using Community version if I choose to at a later point?</blockquote>
Yes, you can upgrade from Community Edition to Enterprise Edition. You will have to upgrade, though, we do not provide support for Community Edition.

<blockquote>2) If yes, what would be the cost? If it is user based - approximately 500 users</blockquote>
Subscriptions are based on a per server charge, not per user. I'll be happy to introduce you to a sales person who can give you pricing if you PM me with your geographical location.

<blockquote>3) What is the maximum users that this version can accomodate?</blockquote>
There is no theoretical limit to the number of users the system can handle. We have production implementations with multiple tens of thousands of users.

<blockquote>4) Is there an option for bulk user upload?</blockquote>
Yes, there are a couple of different options that involve uploading a CSV file or you can write your own bulk importer. Another option is to configure Alfresco to use LDAP for authentication. Alfresco then synchronizes the users into its directory so no bulk upload is needed.

<blockquote>5) What is the largest file size that can be uploaded using this version?</blockquote>
There is no theoretical limit on the largest file the system can support. The limit is on the underlying file system because that is where the files are stored.

<blockquote>6) What is the maximum amount of documents that can be maintained in the system?</blockquote>
There is no theoretical limit on the number of documents that can be stored in the system. From a practical standpoint, we have production installations with tens of millions of documents with some going higher than that.

<blockquote>7) What is the maximum storgage for the Community Version?</blockquote>
See other points. There is no difference between the versions in this regard, although there are some things that will help you scale that are only available in Enterprise Edition, such as the standalone transformation server and clustering.

<blockquote>8) Can I make an 'archived' document available to a specific user or set of users?</blockquote>
I do not know what you mean by archived. But, in general, any document in the repository can be restricted to a specific user or a group of users. Each object in the repository has an Access Control List (ACL) and you have full control over that.

<blockquote>9) Are any programming skills required for implementation and subsequent maintenance?</blockquote>
If you are installing out-of-the-box you just need basic infrastructure skills (deploy an application to a Java application server, set up a database for the application to use, configure networking and firewalls). If you make any customizations, you may need to know some combination of Java, JavaScript (client-side and server-side), and Freemarker.

<blockquote>10) Does the Community have workflow for document circulation? [saw this on the website - but just want to know
for certain if this applies to Community]</blockquote>
Yes. They use the exact same workflow engine. If you need to know the definitive difference between the two, see https://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Enterprise_Edition

<blockquote>11) If yes, what programming skills are required to configure / operate the workflow?</blockquote>
XML, server-side JavaScript, potentially some Java. It all depends on exactly what you are doing.

<blockquote>12) Will users be able to see a list or matrix of related documents?</blockquote>
Yes, the repository supports the notion of associations between documents. You can show a list of related documents for a given document. There is no "matrix" available out-of-the-box but you could write that yourself.

Hope that helps,

Jeff

[tarik2013]

Jeff,

Thanks for that quick response!
This is a big help!

I am especially interested in the document management component >

Final few questions:
1) Does Alfresco Community edition come with all 9 of the different solutions on the website? [i.e. Web
   Publishing, Secure File Sharing, Document Management etc etc]
2) What are the requirements for Alfresco Community? [i.e. hardware, software etc.]
3) Will Alfresco allow me to create an intranet site?
4) I asked about the workflow engine in my previous post….does it come with a default setup or will the
   programming you mentioned be required to start from scratch?
5) Are email alerts to users a part of the package? [e.g. a reminder for document review]

Thanks again,
Tarik.

[jpotts]

<blockquote>1) Does Alfresco Community edition come with all 9 of the different solutions on the website? [i.e. Web
Publishing, Secure File Sharing, Document Management etc etc]</blockquote>
Yes, it sure does.

<blockquote>2) What are the requirements for Alfresco Community? [i.e. hardware, software etc.]</blockquote>
Hardware is tough to gauge. You should download it and benchmark it yourself. It is a Java app so it will be memory hungry. This thread is quite old but it may still be useful: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/JVM_Tuning

You can also run Alfresco on AWS if you don't want to fool with hardware.

The software requirement is a servlet container and a relational database. Most people use Tomcat and either MySQL or PostgreSQL.

<blockquote>3) Will Alfresco allow me to create an intranet site?</blockquote>
It depends. We use Alfresco internally here at Alfresco Software as our Intranet. We supplement that with a Confluence wiki and other tools, but Alfresco is our primary intranet platform. We also leverage cloud sync to push a subset of our content out of our internal repository up to Alfresco in the Cloud. Cloud sync is only available for Enterprise Edition, though.

With that said, Alfresco is not a "portal". If you need lots of integration with other systems or heavy personalization, you'll need something additional. For example, some people combine Liferay or Drupal with Alfresco. Or they develop a custom front-end. It really depends on exactly what you need.

<blockquote>4) I asked about the workflow engine in my previous post….does it come with a default setup or will the
programming you mentioned be required to start from scratch?</blockquote>
When you install you'll see that a certain set of workflows are available right out-of-the-box. So if you want to do an "ad hoc" review ("Hey, colleague, please take a look at this") or you want to do "review and approve" workflows ("Please look at this and either approve or reject it") then those are ready to go with absolutely no programming needed.

That's the advanced workflow engine. We also have a simple workflow engine that can actually be configured by end-users with zero coding, all through the UI. It is very, very basic, but it is possible to automate basic business processes with the simple setup.

<blockquote>5) Are email alerts to users a part of the package? [e.g. a reminder for document review]</blockquote>
It used to be that you had to tweak the advanced workflows to add your own email notification. Now it is just a checkbox. You do have to <a href="http://docs.alfresco.com/4.2/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.alfresco.enterprise.doc%2Fconcepts%2Femail-outbo...">configure your outbound SMTP host</a> in alfresco-global.properties.

Good luck!

Jeff