How does the number of sandboxes affect performance?

[kmartino]

Hello,

As mentioned in this post http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=25737 we are starting to experience decreased performance as we add users and content to the WCM.

That forum post queried about workfow - this one is about the number of sandboxes.

Each user has their own sandbox in the WCM.

The WCM provides a view of staging into the user sandbox for that user's convienence.

Is content in any way synched in this process?  Are actual symlinks maintained?  Or is it completely virtual and only generated when a user peers into their sandbox via the Explorer UI?

If there is a performance penalty related to number of sandboxes - how do you manage it/configure it/track it?

Thank you,

Karl

[pmonks]

There's no copying or symlinking; rather the AVM uses a technique called "layering" [1] that's somewhat similar to how the UnionFS filesystem [2] works, but with file-level granularity and "overlays" (same file exists in both user sandbox and staging sandbox, but with different contents in each).

Cheers,
Peter

[1] http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Transparent_Layers
[2] http://www.filesystems.org/project-unionfs.html

[kmartino]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the info.

Karl