Sunday, April 01, 2007

SharePoint Scaling Limits


Update for 2007 : WSSv3 - Guidelines for acceptable performance


I frequently get asked for SharePoint scaling limits so I though I would blog an entry I can refer people to.

First an extract from the Capacity Planning section of the Windows SharePoint Services Administration guide which answers general WSS limits questions:

None of these are hard limits enforced by the system. They are guidelines for designing a server that has good overall performance.

  • Site collections (Database scope) 50,000 ... Total throughput degrades as the number of site collections increases.
  • Web sites (Web site scope) 2,000 ... The interface for enumerating subsites of a given Web site does not perform well much
    beyond 2,000 subsites.
  • Web sites (Site collection) 250,000 - You can create a very large total number of Web sites by nesting the subsites. For example, 100
    sites each with 1000 subsites is 100,100 Web sites.
  • Documents (Folder scope) 2,000 ... The interfaces for enumerating documents in a folder do not perform well beyond a thousand entries.
  • Documents (Library scope) 2 million ... You can create very large document libraries by nesting folders.
  • Security principals (Web site scope) 2,000 ... The size of the access control list is limited to a few thousand security principals, in other words users and groups in the Web site.
  • Users ( Web site scope) 2 million ... You can add millions of people to your Web site by using Microsoft Windows security groups to manage security instead of using individual users.
  • Items (List scope) 2,000 ... The interface for enumerating list items does not perform well beyond a few thousand items.
  • Web Parts (Page scope) 100 ... Pages with more than 100 Web Parts are slow to render.
  • Web Part personalization (Page scope) 10,000 ... Pages with more than a few thousand user personalizations are slow to render.
  • Lists (Web site scope) 2,000 ... The interface for enumerating lists and libraries in a Web site does not perform well beyond a few thousand entries.
  • Document size (File scope) 50 MB ... The file save performance degrades as the file size grows. The default maximum is 50 MB. This maximum is enforced by the system, but you can change it to any value up to 2 GB (2047 MB) if you have applied Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 1.


For SharePoint Portal Server, here's an extract from the Capacity Planning whitepaper:

It is important to understand the ramifications of the different features and functions of the SharePoint Portal Server solutions to size the system so that the performance of the system is good.

The following table lists some of the SharePoint Portal Server objects and describes their recommended use. "Typical" indicates comfortable and well tested; "maximum" indicates that the system can support that number, but not without some performance ramifications or
special configurations.

An asterisk (*) indicates a hard limit; no asterisk indicates a tested or supported limit.

  • Portal sites (full) - typically 2 ... maximum 15 *
  • Portal sites (child) - typically 10 ... maximum 100 *
  • Areas - typically 1,000 ... maximum 10,000
  • Best Bets - typically 1,000 ... maximum 25,000
  • Area depth - typically 5 ... maximum 20 *
  • User profiles - typically 50,000 ... maximum 1,000,000
  • Audiences - typically 500 ... maximum 10,000
  • Audience memberships - typically 500,000 ... maximum 5,000,000
  • SSO credentials - typically 100,00 ... maximum 100,000
  • Search indexes - typically 3 ... maximum 32
  • Content sources -typically 25 ... maximum 250
  • Search scopes - typically 25 ... maximum 250 *
  • Indexed documents per content index - typically 100,000 ... maximum 5,000,000
  • Indexed documents - typically 2,500,000 ... maximum 20,000,000
  • Thesaurus entries - typically 1,000 ... maximum 10,000
  • Alerts - typically 50,000 ... maximum 1,000,000
  • Team sites - typically 10,000 ... maximum 250,000
  • Personal sites - typically 10,000 ... maximum 250,000

16 Comments:

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      I'm at a loss at what to do.
    It would be good to have this info (first half) in the WSS FAQ. However naturally you'd want to have a link to your blog rather than just your text (and name) in a FAQ item.
    However, as you say, this information is in the Admin Guide that I already link to, so should I link to it twice?
    Still wondering.... Mike Walsh Helsinki   

  • Blogger Mark said…

      Your call !   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      any thoughts on limits of content databases? we are thinking of using stsadm.exe backup / restore and are trying to find out how many content databases is too much. (each restore needs a new content db becuase of the GUID). Thanks,
    John   

  • Blogger Christopher Bermingham said…

      Another reason not to use subfolders- link   

  • Blogger Luis said…

      Nice post, good info.   

  • Anonymous Steve Teale said…

      Mark, do you have any feel for what "The interfaces" in "The interfaces for enumerating documents in a folder do not perform well" refers to.

    Does it mean that the performance of pages that show the listing of the doclib will be bad, or that CAML searches into the doclib won't perform?   

  • Blogger Mark said…

      Hi Steve
    Both.   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      In suammry are we saying that a Single SharePoint Server can handle 2,000,000 documents and its best not to use subfolders. If true could you have a single Document Library with 2,000,000 documents?

    Thanks   

  • Blogger Mark said…

      A WSS server could support more than this - you can have many document libraries per server.

    If you put a huge number in the same document library, then break it down by using nested folders within the doclib. Each folder shouldnt have more than 2000 items.   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      came across this thread while searching for answers to this problem:

    The maximum number of Web Parts for all zones on this page has been exceeded.

    error we are getting, relates to the number of parts we have on a particular page. It looks like about 45 web parts. We were trying to create a customized page ... but we need atleast 100.

    anyone interested in giving me a suggestion or feedback ... email address is: saintbrian@gmail.com

    thanks.   

  • Anonymous Cara said…

      Hi Mark
    I'm a bit confused here - I need to set up a document library that will receive 700-1000 new documents every month.
    As far as I can see it's bad practice to use folders, but if I don't the performance of the doc library will suffer after 2-3 months (2000 docs). Am I forced to use folders in this case? And will the search functionality be reduced if I do?   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      Use a folder for each month.
    There wont be any issue with Search.   

  • Anonymous Mikey said…

      Great post, Mark. Question - if document versioning turned on, any limit to number of versions?   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      There is no published limitations / warnings about the number of versions.   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      I experienced that Alerts have a restriction of 500 per Web and User

    :(   

  • Blogger ankit said…

      hi
    great post!!
    i want to know how many versions can we restore in document library?
    is there any limit for that.
    or any limit regarding the performance issue??   

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