The Maximum size of data that can be replicated is determined by several factors. FRP has no preset limits. Your bandwidth, number of files, number of replication servers, quality of connection, hardware and memory are all factors. In a good quality connection, with hardware that can keep up FRP can fill up to 85% of the available bandwidth which is the peak rate at which you could possibly move data over the internet. Of course FRP has the ability to shape your bandwidth usage with throttles, schedules, compression, and by making use of delta level bit synchronization to move only the changed bits of files that need to be updated.
Our tests show that FRP is faster than any competing product and that on average it uses about half of the system resources of other replication solutions. FRP's replication engine is totally proprietary, coded from the ground up to be lean and fast. FRP does not use any OS services or other programs such as RSYNC.
A few examples:
- A modern dual processor machine with 2 gig of memory and bandwidth of a 1.5mb Internet connection can move a lot of data. Say a million files and a few hundred gigabyte of data, this varies a bit with your individual situation.
- Within a Lan as opposed to the internet FRP can move data faster than a copy or move operation done with the Operating System of the computers it's running on. Further, data can be maintained with bit level sync reducing upkeep bandwidth and time to on average less than 20% of FRP's already blazingly fast replication speed for the whole file.
- We have customers maintaining terabytes of data between 80 or more typical 1 and 2 proc servers located all over the USA replicating to a quad proc server with 4 gig of memory dedicated to FRP (of 32gig installed) over a variety of DSL (many of which are 1.5mb consumer grade) lines.
- We also have customers with multiple locations around the globe. In one case using typical server hardware, a large retail chain is replicating photos for advertising artwork from manufacturing locations in Asia, to Artists in India, and then on to ad agencies in the US. Their greatest challenge is the quality and speed of the internet connections in India. FRP is designed to compensate as much as possible for tough conditions on the net with multiple retries and by moving only the data that has changed as opposed to entire files.
- FRP was selected for use by a company with oil exploration ships at sea to replicate charts, and data back to shore. A key factor in the selection of FRP was it's ability to recover and replicate in conditions where satellite coverage at sea might be marginal.
If you have a very large data set (multi TB, millions of files) , it pays to preposition the data on the destination site by shipping a loaded hard drive, then let FRP's delta level sync update only the changed bits to the files when the server is brought up at the destination site.