1.8

Firewall/Port considerations
For Firewall/Port considerations, please see this article in the Knowledge Base: Connect
Firewall/Port Configuration
Performance Considerations
This page is a comprehensive guide to getting the most performance out of PlanetPress
Connect as well as a rough guideline to indicate when it's best to upgrade.
Performance Analysis Details
In order to get the most out of PlanetPress Connect, it is important to determine how best to
maximize performance. The following guidelines will be helpful in extracting the best
performance from PlanetPress Connect before looking into hardware upgrades or extra
PlanetPress Connect performance packs.
l
Job Sizes and Speed: In terms of pure output speed, it's important to first determine what
job size is expected, and adjust "Scheduling Preferences" on page85 accordingly. The
basic rules are:
l If processing a small number of very large records (when each individual record is
composed of a large number of pages), more instances with an equal amount of
speed units is better. For hardware, RAM and Hard Drive speeds are most
important, since the smallest divisible part (the record) cannot be split on multiple
machines or even cores.
l If creating a very large number of small records (hundreds of thousands of 2-3 page
individual records, for instance), a smaller number of instances with a large number
of speed units would be better. As for hardware, then the number of cores becomes
critical, whereas RAM and hard drive are secondary. Performance Packs, as well as
the MySQL instance being separate, would be helpful if your most powerful
machine starts struggling.
l Mix and match. For example, one instance prioritized for large jobs and the rest for
smaller, quicker jobs. Or the contrary. Or, whatever you want, really.
l
RAM Configuration: By default, each instance of the Merge Engine and Weaver Engine
is set to use 640MB of RAM. This means that regardless of speed units, if not enough
memory is available, output speed might not be as expected. Assuming that the machine
itself is not running any other software, the rule of thumb is the following: The total number
of used memory in the machine should be pretty much the maximum available (around
95%).
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