Max task in MSPS Project plan = ?

[rroszko]

Hi,

On MS Project Server in Enterprise mode, what is the
maximum size it can handle, meaning how many tasks and
how many resources?

Our setup is two servers (MS Project w/IIS and SQL
Server Standard Edition). Our resource pool is
approximately 1000 resources.

We have 3 PMs and they created jumbo plans. One is 2000
tasks. One is 2500 tasks. The huge one is even more
insane - it has 4300 tasks with 400 resources assigned
for 6 months duration.

There are only 4 plans on the server and to say it's
choking is an understatement. It takes 30 minutes
to "Colloborate, Publish, All Info" for any of these
projects.

I told the client that these plans are too gargantuan
for MS Project Server to handle. Am I wrong? I said
plans should be 500 tasks-ish up to 1000 tasks if you
must, and limit it to a max of 100 resources or so. I
mean, I have never seen such huge plans with such
major resource loading...

Can anyone tell me what the Microsoft recommended
maximums are (as well as any third pary info)
on this?

Thanks a bunch,

Rick

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Rick:

It sounds like the Project Server system isn't engineered very well. The
system should be able to handle the workload you describe. What are the
specs on the workstations? With large plans like this, fast processors and
lots of RAM is a big factor.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the book on Project Server
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

-

 

[rroszko]

Gary,

Thanks for the reply. Here are the specs to everything.

The network is 100BaseT but we (the PMs and I) are
apparently on a congested segment which of course doesn't
help. I called network but the short of it is they said
oh darn, nothing we can do... Next:

There are two servers (IIS and SQL). Both run on Dual
2.8GHz P4 Xeon HT (which makes the box look like 4 CPUs
instead of 2, of course - does that actually help or hinder?)
Each box has 2G RAM. The SQL server is standard license, so
I can't add more RAM. I don't think I can convince the client to buy Ent.
SQL at $20K.

In my opinion, we need to rebuild the servers from scratch.
The original people added users via Resource Pool and PWA
and/or both. I don't like it when that happens. They also
did 'renames' of projects thru the system. I don't care for that either.
The MSPS view processor hung so even though
the PMs posted data eveyday, the resources only saw the
old information.

I would like to move the view processor off to a 3rd server.
We don't use SharePoint now, but they are thinking of
loading up on Doc, Issues and Risks for each plan. That would be a strain
also. Any thoughts there?

The workstations vary, of course, but PMs are on old clunkers - PIII with
512M RAM. I have a P4 2.8G w/1G RAM but the processing doesn't improve much
when I try to open/upload their plans when I tested it on my 'puter.
I remember in the old days when 286's were still on the
net, their speed deggraded the entire net (but that was also
during the hub days, not switches which we are using...
Thoughts?

Another example, PWA of the huge plan takes 90 secondes to show up on all of
our PCs. When I go to a sperate network segment, it take 30 seconds. If I
do it via TS right on the IIS server, it takes 5 seconds. While upgrading
the PCs
would help, any thing else we can do?

Thanks for everything,

Rick

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

rroszko:

If you're getting the same performance on your workstation then there can be
a lot of things going on. Congested networks are certainly a problem, but it
takes more than a casual news group post to begin to determine where the
bottleneck is occurring. The fact that you can cut the open times by 2/3 by
switching network segments says a lot, don't you think?

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the book on Project Server
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

-

 

[rroszko]

Network control is beyond my control. (I already have several requests into
the NOC, Server Team, and Infrastructure to monitor, upgrade, etc. and the
requests are approximately 0.0000% active...)

Thanks anyway...