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Hardware Requirements
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The hardware requirements for a server hosting the OpenEngagement DMS are the same as for hosting any other Plone-based product, and so this section quotes Plone experts discussing requirements for Plone. As with any Plone-based product, there are certain minimum requirements, but the specific requirements will be based on the volume of data stored and the volume of traffic.
The OpenEngagement DMS may be installed on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X. However, the installer will only run on Windows platforms. With Windows systems, a server operating system is recommended, since non-server operating systems limit the number of simultaneous connections which may be made with the server.
From Andy McKay’s The Definitive Guide To Plone:
"For a Plone server, a high-performance computer will obviously make Plone perform better. Plone is a complicated system that requires processing power and memory. In general, it's recommended you don't go into production with a machine slower than 2GHz with less than 1GB of Random Access Memory (RAM) if you're serving a large Web site. It works fine with setups as low as 500MHz and 64MB of memory for more modest sites, however. For a base installation of Plone, you'll need about 50MB of hard drive space. If you already have installations of Zope or Python, then this will be a great deal less; you'll need about 2MB. You must also account for the Plone object database, which can grow to almost any size depending upon the amount of data you store."
With the OpenEngagement DMS, the major parameter affecting performance is RAM. The OpenEngagement DMS can run with as little as 512 MB of RAM, but the more the better. 2GB of RAM is ideal. The hard drive disk space required is based almost entirely on the combined size of the documents the firm anticipates uploading to the DMS. As a rough means to estimate the hard drive spaces required, firms may estimate the combined size of the documents and double this.
Users should also arrange for full backups to a separate hard-drive.
Firms with hundreds of users may and firms with thousands of users will likely need to utilize multiple servers in order to ensure the DMS is responsive. For this, we recommend using ZEO technology and a load balancing application such as Pound. However, some firms even with thousands of users may not generate enough traffic to necessitate this, particularly where high end hardware is used.