Supportworks ESP Maximum Limits

Applicable To:Supportworks ESP

What is the maximum number of calls that can be logged on Supportworks ESP?

The current system uses a 32-bit signed integer as the primary key for the opencall table, and in memory uses a 32-bit number for the same. Therefore, the maximum number of calls that can be created on a Supportworks system before it needs to be archived and restarted is 2,147,483,647 - which is a lot of calls for any system. In fact, you are more likely to run out of disk space before you get anywhere near the limit. If you assume each call on average takes 10K of disk space (file and e-mail attachments included), then you will need 20TB+ of disk space. To obtain an idea of typical disk usage by the database, see the FAQ entitled Size Comparison of SwSQL with MS SQL.

By default, file attachments for calls are stored in C:\Program Files\Hornbill\Supportworks Server\data\cfa_store and e-mail attachments in C:\Program Files\Hornbill\Supportworks Server\data\_mb_attstore, but they can be set to reside in any location on the network. Depending on the requirement, enough disk space should be kept for them on the server concerned.

As well as occupying disk space, open calls are cached in server memory whenever they are in use. However, the memory required to accommodate even thousands of simultaneously accessed open calls will always be much less than the amount of memory recommended for the Supportworks server. Therefore, memory space will never be an issue in relation to limiting the number of calls.

What is the maximum number of concurrent client/server connections?

We have tested the application with up to 2048 concurrent connections and the system still works. However, under Windows, you then start to find some of the operating system's limitations. We state we will support up to 1000 concurrent connections and we know of live sites that have peaked at 700-800 concurrent connections without problems. Performance still remains good, but it does depend on what you are doing with the system - particularly in relation to how much database searching and reporting is done simultaneously.

What is the maximum number of asset and user records that can be handled by Supportworks?

There is no practical limit in Supportworks - this simply depends on the database you are using. Unlike the call tables, asset and customer information uses the much larger VARCHAR data type for primary-key fields, and this is why the limitation for that kind of data will lie with the database. If you are using MySQL, then Supportworks will easily handle millions of each type of record without a problem. Of course, again how you report and/or search on this data will dictate the performance you would expect.

What is the maximum number of characters that a multi-line text field can have?

The ultimate maximum is defined in the database and depends on the data type of the table column concerned. By default, the data type of every such column is set to Long Alphanumeric (also known as TEXT or LONGVARCHAR), with a maximum limit of 65535 characters.

Although databases themselves are capable of supporting larger data types than this (such as MEDIUMTEXT and LONGTEXT), the Database Schema Editor does not currently allow you to change table columns to any of them.