Disk space requirements and recommendations

Last update: 2023-09-28
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Besides the space necessary to install the software, Image Serving has the following disk space requirements:

Description/ Default Location/ Set With Calculation/ Recommendation Comments

Source images, fonts, ICC profiles

install_folder /images

IS::RootPaths

Varies; see comments below.

Only must be accessible to the Image Server; the servers never modify data.

HTTP response data cache

install_folder /cache/is-response

PS::ResponseCacheFolders

PlatformServer::cache.maxSize x 2; at least 2 GB recommended.

This cache also stores nested/embedded data and foreign source images.

Image catalog data cache

install_folder /cache/catalog

CS::CatalogCacheFolder

Allow the catalog folder to use 1.5x the space.

Populated when catalogs are loaded initially.

Log data

install_folder /logs

PS::LogFolder

IS::LogFile

SV::LogFile

100 MB or more.

It varies depending on the logging configuration and server use.

Image Server temporary files

install_folder /temp

IS::TempDirectory

SV::TempDirectory

100 MB is sufficient for most uses.

Short-lived data; may be needed for source images other than PTIFFs and certain response image formats.

Disk space requirements for source images

Adobe recommends that you convert all source images to the pyramid TIFF file format (PTIFF) using the Image Converter command-line tool (IC). This conversion ensures optimal runtime performance of Image Serving for all applications. While the Image Server can process all source file formats accepted by IC, Dynamic Media does not support for such uses.

When you use PTIFF files, the following rules of thumb can help you determine the space requirements.

total_space (bytes) = number_of_images × (2000 + avg_pixel_count x avg_num_components × p_factor)

  • avg_pixel_count The average pixel size (width x height) of all original source images. For example, if the original images are typically around 2k × 2k pixels, this would be 4 megapixels.
  • avg_num_components Depends on the type of images. For mostly RGB images, it is 3; for mostly CMYK or RGBA images, it is 4. Use 3.5 if half the images are RGB and the other half is RGBA.
  • p_factor Depends on the compression type and quality set when the images are converted with IC.
PTIFF compression p_factor

Uncompressed

33

Deflate-Compression

25-0.75, depending on the image

JPEG Compression

1 (typical for JPEG quality 95)

NOTE

This approximation does not account for file system overhead. The actual space on the disk may be substantially larger.

Example

An Image Serving deployment expects to use 30,000 low-resolution legacy images, with an average size of 500 × 500 RGB pixels. New print-quality image data is added at a rate of 10,000 per year. The typical CMYK image size is 4k × 6k bytes. All data is JPEG compressed at high quality. The total amount of disk space after three years of use is estimated as follows:

total_space = 30,000 × (2k + 0.5k × 0.5k × 3 × 0.1) + 3 × 10,000 × (2k + 4k × 6k × 4 × 0.1) = 2.2 G + 268 GB = approximately 270 GB

For guaranteed best quality, a compression such as zip could be employed. Assuming a p_factor of 0.4, the total amount of disk space required is approximately four times larger. In this case, slightly more than 1 terabyte.

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