Portal Sizing

Calculate maximum number of concurrent users after you calculate maximum number of concurrent sessions. To calculate the maximum number of concurrent users, use this formula:

concurrent users =

number of concurrent sessions / average time between hits

For example, consider an intranet Portal Server example of 50,000 users. The number of connected sessions under its peak loads is estimated to be 80% of its registered user base. On average, a user accesses the Portal Desktop once every 10 minutes.

The calculation for this example is:

40000 / 10 = 4000

The maximum number of concurrent users during the peak hours for this Portal Server site should be 4,000.

Average Session Time

Average session time is the time between user login and logout averaged over a number of users. The length of the session time is inversely proportional to the number of logins occurring (that is, the longer the session duration, the fewer logins per second are generated against Portal Server for the same concurrent users base). Session time is the time between user login and user logout.

How the user uses Portal Server often affects average session time. For example, a user session involving interactive applications typically has a longer session time than a user session involving information only.

Search Engine Factors

If your portal site will offer a Search channel, you need to include sizing factors for the Search Engine in your sizing calculations. Search Engine sizing requirements depend on the following factors:

The size of index partitions on the active list of the index directory

Partition size is directly proportional to the size and number of indexed and searchable terms.

Average disk space requirement of a resource description (RD) To calculate this, use this formula:

average disk space requirement = database size / number of RDs in database

66 Portal Server 6 2005Q1 • Deployment Planning Guide

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Sun Microsystems 2005Q1 manual Average Session Time, Search Engine Factors