System recommendations
On this page
These recommendations should help you better plan your Portfolio installation based on your organization’s needs. These are not comprehensive and are not intended to cover every situation.
If you would like help configuring your Portfolio system, find out about our Integration and Consulting Services.
Hardware
Use these general recommendations based on the number of assets you expect to have and/or the number of Portfolio users in your organization.
| Total Assets* | Users (max.) | Processor Cores | Disk R/W Access | RAM | Boot Drive Space | Data Drive Free Space |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| < 50,000 | 3 | 4 | 60 MB/s | 16 GB | 100 GB | 125 GB |
| < 500,000 | 5 | 4 | 180 MB/s | 16 GB | 100 GB | 250 GB |
| < 1,000,000 | 10 | 8 | 250 MB/s | 16 GB | 150 GB | 500 GB |
| < 5,000,000 | 25 | 12 | 250 MB/s | 24 GB | 500 GB | 2.5 TB |
| <10,000,000 | 50 | 24 | 250 MB/s | 32 GB | 1 TB | 5 TB |
* All catalogs
The data drive space recommendations in this table do not include space for assets, including the Portfolio Vault. If you intend to use a Vault, you should have a very large directly-attached (internal) drive where you can locate it.
File sharing
Keep these issues in mind when you configure file sharing on your server.
On Windows Server, ensure all file sharing connections are using SMB 3.0 or higher. For Windows Server 2012 R2, see the Microsoft article, Which version of the SMB protocol are you using?
We do not recommend using a Windows-based solution that provides Apple Filing Protocol. macOS provides native read/write access to SMB shares.
Note: Portfolio does not support Watch Folders on Distributed File Shares (DFS).
Macintosh memory
Mac systems are sensitive to third-party memory. Although your Mac may boot properly, Portfolio’s search database and Media Engine will not operate correctly on a server with memory issues. Be sure to have at least 16GB of RAM installed and verify that there are no memory issues prior to installing Portfolio.
Testing Mac memory
For a quick check to see if your memory is functioning, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu, click System Report, then select Memory under the Hardware category. If any memory slot shows a Status other than OK, you need to replace that memory before installing Portfolio.
For a more comprehensive memory test, download MemTest86. Instructions are included for creating a bootable USB drive to run MemTest86.
Drive space
We recommend that Portfolio and its data folders should all be located on internal drives in the Portfolio system. In most cases, using locally-attached or network storage will have a significant impact on cataloging speed, and can also adversely affect performance of the Web and Desktop clients.
In addition, on macOS an external drive (attached via USB or Thunderbolt, for example) can result in a duplicate mount point if the server unexpectedly restarts. This could lead to data loss.
Note: Duplicate mount points are described in this Apple document: Duplicate mount point in /Volumes after unexpected restart.
Drive divisions
We recommend using two drives (ideally, you should use separate physical drives, but volumes partitioned from a single drive can be used): the boot drive for the operating system and Portfolio software; and a data drive for assets, the Portfolio Vault, previews, temporary work (asset processing), log files, and backups.
You should relocate these folders to your data drive:
Tip: The nature of Watch Folder catalogs allows you to have assets located anywhere on your network. Whenever possibly, we recommend moving assets to the server using the default AutoSync folder that can be created with each Watch Folder catalog.
Typical folder structure
An example configuration for a catalog of about 50,000 assets that use about 1 TB of drive space would be as follows:
|
Boot drive, 100 GB |
|
Operating system |
|
|
Portfolio installation |
|
Data drive, 2 TB |
|
Assets folder (shared, for original assets in Portfolio Watch Folder catalogs) |
|
|
Backups folder (for Portfolio backups) |
|
|
Logs folder (for Portfolio log files) |
|
|
Previews folder (for preview files and clips) |
|
|
Vault folder (for the Portfolio Vault, including Vault catalog assets) |
|
|
Work folder (for temporary asset processing) |
Note that these sizes are minimum recommendations. Space requirements depend on the types of assets, preview size settings, and whether you utilize Portfolio asset versions, among other factors.