Binary File Storage

[brettemiller]

We are a small organization using Fortress 1.1.4 backed by SQL Server 2005. I've set up one repository for our source code and a second repository for "documentation". So far I'm the only one using the documentation repository; however, we have a lot of documentation we could potentially check in -- let's say 40 GB. I know that Fortress will happily store binary files and maintain versions of binary files, but I wonder about the following:

1) We're mostly storing Microsoft Word documents. Being able to check in versions and retrieve them is very appealing. Is Fortress / Vault recommended for storing lots of binary documents as we intend?

2) My understanding is that Vault compresses files and stores the changes, even binary files, though the compression is not as good. Will performance degrade if we use Fortress to store all our documentation? How will the document repository perform over time? Will a bloated document repository cause performance to degrade in the source code repository? My fellow developers will shoot me.

3) Are there some suggestions for avoiding performance issues in the scenario I've described? I noticed some tips here:

http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic ... les#p16163

Thanks!

Brett

[lbauer]

Vault or Fortress performance and is less dependent on whether files are binary but rather on in how many nodes are in the tree, and how many total items are stored. Obviously a 40 GB database will have different requirements than a 2 GB database.

The recommendations in the KB article you referred to would be helpful to you, including making sure you have adequate disk space, and having fast disks, etc.

Keeping the developer code in a separate repository is a good idea, so that the Word documents won't affect performance that much for developers.

If the documents can be reasonably divided up amongst different repositories, that might be a good idea, too. Having 5,000 folders in each of two repositories will give you better performance than 10,000 folders in one repository, for instance.

If you don't need folder security, turning that off will improve performance as well. You can still limit access to a particular repository, just not to specific folders within the repository.