[p4] File cache tuning for Windows servers

[Trey Valenta]

Patrick Bennett wrote:
> You definitely don't want the "Maximize Throughput for File Sharing"
> option.  It allocates the vast majority of system memory to file
> cache. This option should really only be used if the Windows server
> is used purely for just that, file sharing.
> This would significantly affect the Perforce server's performance
> (which, in an ideal world, and given enough memory, would have the
> entire database in memory).


That was my initial assumption, as well, especially since I've mostly
worked on large Solaris servers where I was less likely to hit 32-bit
limits. This system has 4GB RAM and run the standard 32bit version of
Windows Server 2003. There are about 130k directories under the depot in
P4ROOT and about 450k files. After doing some cleanup, uncompressed
checkpoints are about 3.5GB. Given these numbers, is Perforce
contstrained to cache only portions of the database that it can fit into
the 2GB allocated by the OS or does the OS provide a caching API back to
the Perforce server? Would increasing the size of the file cache offset
the application's inability to actually cache the entire database? 

For those of you who've moved to the 64bit version of Perforce -- did
you notice any significant performance benefits?

Thanks again,
Trey Valenta