M100345: Scalability limits for ManageSoft (managed devices per Distribution Location)

This note helps answer customer questions about scaling their distribution hierarchies. The information is the best estimates from the lab at time of writing. (Copied from the 6.1.4 ManageSoft Guide and suppressed in the 6.2 edition of same.)

Scalability limits

There is no simple formula to determine the number of managed devices that can sensibly access a single distribution location. It depends on a number of factors, including:

• The frequency of updates
• The spread of schedule timing windows
• The typical sizes of applications
• The network speed (the ideal is to have a distribution location available at LAN speeds from each managed device)
• The limitations of the underlying file server or web server.

As a rule of thumb, start with something in the range of about one distribution location for every 500-2000 managed devices, and adjust based on experience. It is more likely that other factors, like the geographical spread of managed devices and their position inside or outside of the firewall, will determine the number of managed devices per distribution location.

There are other limits on (and related to) the distribution system. Note that the following represented the best tested lab knowledge at time of writing, and that you ignore these limits at your peril!

• Total number of users supported from a single warehouse: 25,000
• Total number of computers supported from a single warehouse: 25,000
• Total number of distribution locations under one warehouse
• Maximum child locations/servers for each distribution server (fan out): 100
  (In addition, each distribution location and distribution server must have exactly one parent.)
• Total number of software packages stored and deployable per warehouse: 1000
• Maximum number of simultaneous distribution jobs: 25,000
  (Each job is a single transfer of a package to a distribution server or distribution location. Thus if you have the maximum number of 1,000 distribution locations for a warehouse, you could have a maximum of 25 packages in transit to all of them at any one time.)
• Maximum depth of distribution server hierarchy (layers): 10
• Maximum managed devices supported from one distribution server: 2,000
• Maximum number of schedules in use: 100

Where even greater scalability is required, remember that it is possible to link multiple warehouses, each controlling a segment of the enterprise.