4. Capacity Planning

Table of Contents

• 4.1. Database Sizing and Growth

• 4.2. SafePages Sizing and Growth

• 4.3. Network Bandwidth Planning

This section discusses capacity planning considerations so administrators can plan future infrastructure requirements and make decisions about how to deploy the application. SavaPage is designed to be self-maintaining, however it is important that the administrator understands the disk-space requirements and how this changes overtime.

4.1. Database Sizing and Growth

Special attention is needed to make sure there is enough disk space to hold a growing database. Database growth is very dependent on the usage patterns and therefore can differ significantly from site to site.

Although, there is some overhead for data like Users, Proxy Printers and Queues, this data is static and does not grow over-time. The majority of database growth is caused by logging the document flow.

So, the best prediction of database growth is based on the estimated number of documents printed to SavaPage and Proxy Printers, and exported to PDF.

The table below provides an indication of growth per 10,000 jobs for SavaPage and Proxy Printing and PDF export. Combining these numbers with your estimate of user activity result in a growth estimate.

Database size increase metrics per document flow.

Job Type	Increase per 10,000 jobs
SavaPage printing	15 MB
Proxy Printer printing	20 MB
SavaPage Financial	5 MB
PDF export	20 MB

To demonstrate how to estimate database growth we make a number of assumptions. Please adjust these assumptions to suit your organization. The assumptions are:

• 1 job for each job type per user per day

• 20 working days in a month

• Therefore, 20 jobs for each job type per user per month

Here is a sample database growth calculation based on a 500 user site:

1. Calculate the total number of jobs expected for the month (i.e. the total number of users multiplied by the number of jobs). So in this example, SavaPage is handling 10,000 jobs for each job type a month.

2. Calculate the monthly growth rate by dividing the jobs per month by 10,000 and then multiplying by the database growth rate:

   Job Type	Monthly growth	Total
   SavaPage printing	10,000 / 10,000 * 15	15 MB
   Proxy Printer printing	10,000 / 10,000 * 20	20 MB
   SavaPage Financial	10,000 / 10,000 * 5	5 MB
   PDF export	10,000 / 10,000 * 20	20 MB

   Therefore in this situation the database will grow by approximately 15 + 20 + 5 + 20 = 60 MB per month.

3. To estimate the growth per year, multiply the above by 12. Therefore in this situation, the database will grow by 60 * 12 = 720 MB per year.

Tip

You can limit database growth by purging old log data after an automatic database backup. In our example, when you set the number of days document logs are held to 365, database increase will maximize to 720MB. See Backups.