For a number of years we have used Portfolio as an archive server for old projects to be archived from our various data servers.

This would free up space on those servers, & with  the added benefits of using the built-in meta-tagging ability to view cataloged files via a web browser.

With the release of the most recent version, we moved from a Windows 2008r2 VM which was starting to creak under the 20+TB of data we had archived to a Mac Pro 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD & 2x24TB LaCie 8big Rack Thunderbolt 2.

However, a few months in & not all data had been cataloged & the Mac Pro was pretty much idling. So I had a hunt through Portfolio’s various files with Extensis support on the phone & came up with the below locations in which the memory allocation can be amended from the defaults to improve performance by utilising more resources.

Breadcrumbs

As there aren’t any options in the GUI, I started looking at the LaunchDaemons that run start the services for Portfolio.

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.edb.launchd.portfoliodb.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.extensis.dam-server.web.admin.launchd.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.extensis.portfolio.server.media.delegate.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.extensis.portfolio.server.elasticsearch.plist

With the LaunchDaemons the Program Arguments key gives either the location of the directory we want to look in as a start:

Once found & armed with this link passed to me by Extensis support I inspected the running java processes in Activity Monitor & in looking at the “Open files & ports” tab I was able to track back the various locations to up the Memory allocation for Portfolio’s Web app, Media Delegate & Elastic search.The locations for the files are given below, I edited mine in nano but 1st made a backup of the original. These changes are correct as of 1.6.1.

Also, I’m running Portfolio on OSX Server. But similar locations & settings can be set if you’re running Portfolio on a Windows Server.

Elastic Search:

Location:

/Applications/Extensis/Portfolio\ Server/applications/elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch.in.sh

Section to edit:

Change the ES_MAX_MEM setting, the default as shown above is 4GB.

Media Delegate:

Location: 

/Applications/Extensis/Portfolio\ Server/applications/tomcat/bin/setenv.sh

Section to edit:

Change the -Xmx setting, the default as shown above is 1.5GB in MB, the change also needs to be in MB.

Web App:

Location: 

/Applications/Extensis/Portfolio\ Server/applications/jboss/bin/standalone.conf

Section to edit:

Change the -Xmx setting, the default as shown above is 4GB.

How Much?

As all 3 of the above work in conjunction with PostgreSQL I allocated each 1/4 of my Mac Pro’s 64GB RAM & soon after Activity Monitor reported:

Restarting Portfolio

Once changes have been made you’ll need to restart Portfolio for the changes to be applied. Restarting via the Admin portal is not enough to pick up all of the above changes.

If you can restart the box hosting Portfolio then that works. But as I had a number of users connected to the Server for file sharing I started restarting the LaunchDaemons. As, it seemed that Portfolio can through some odd results if the order is “off” I knocked up the below & it seems to bring things back to a nice state & that script can be found here.