5.6 Understand Your User Activity Workload

As explained in Novell Filr 1.1: Test Report—Workload Scalability/Capacity (OES), estimating the file-activity workload for your Filr deployment requires that you understand how your users work, what kinds of tasks they perform, how often they do them, which clients they use, and so on.

5.6.1 Tasks and System Load

Typical Filr user tasks can include the following:

  • Uploading files

  • Downloading files

  • Viewing files

  • Sharing files

  • Commenting on files

  • Searching file content

Determining the system load for these tasks is not as straight-forward as might be assumed. For example, in some situations, commenting on a file could cause a greater load than downloading a small file.

You need to clearly identify the tasks your users perform in order to do the following:

  • Properly monitor your system with Ganglia or other tools of your choosing.

  • Determine which system adjustments provide the most benefit.

5.6.2 Task Frequency

The fact that task frequency is also important is quite obvious. Are your users always logged in to Filr and constantly performing various tasks? Do they only occasionally access Filr? Or do they fall somewhere between those two extremes?

It is a good practice to be aware of how frequently users access Filr.

5.6.3 Client Access Method

Desktop clients are more resource-intensive than the web application or mobile clients.

  • Desktop Clients: Each user request usually involves multiple REST requests. Background synchronization continues regardless of whether the user is actively using the client. In fact, an inactive desktop user actually puts more load on Filr than an active mobile client or web user.

  • Mobile Clients: Although the REST requests that originate from mobile clients are similar to desktop requests, they are less resource-intensive, because they are single and they don’t involve any background synchronization.

  • Filr Web Application: These requests are simple HTTPS requests to Filr.