Deployment Solution

I have an REALLY old DS 6.5 training manual that states:

Each Deployment Database can manage up to 5,000 computers but Altiris recommends stopping at 3,500 for best performance.

(This assumes the computer has dual 3.0 GHz processors and at least 4GB of RAM.)

I've searched high and low but can't find current documentation stating the maximum number of computers a single database can handle.  Is this limiation still true with DS 6.9 SP 6 on Windows 2008 R2 using an off-box SQL 2008 R2 server?

Thanks in Advance,

Ryan

We manage just over 5,000 desktops and laptops with about 3,500 connected at any one time using a 2003 VM and separate VM running SQL 2008. We only use it for imaging.

I find it's fine provided I clean out events over 90 days old after a big reimage event. So after we'd migrated all desktops from XP to Win7 the events needed clearing out and now we're reimaging most PCs as we move to a new building it's slowing down again and will need an event clear out.

I've not seen any official updated sizing info.
 

The limitation is NOT the hardware, but the engine.  The engine code for DS 6.9 is very old and was not built for the current muti-threaded high-capacity servers.  The server can get stronger and stronger, and you might stretch things a bit, but not by much because the code can't handle the traffic.  Remember, each client in 6.9 is DIRECTLY connected via an open port to the server.  Contrast this to 7.5 where there is no open connection and when connected, they use HTTP - connectionless communication.  BIG difference!

In my experience DS 6.9 is mainly a SQL hog. So limiting the number of open consoles helps together with the refesh interval. Also you can tune a bit how often the clients communicate with the server. Turn of all logging if you're not troubleshooting.

That said, it also depends greatly what you do with the clients; most clients just sit there...

I know Symantec wants to play it save with a max of 3500 clients. If you have a remote beefy SQL server I keep a max of 8000 clients.

Just my 2 cents.