Sizing Guide

Sizing Guide

This table summarizes the various deployment options available for MetaDefender ICAP Server to illustrate the differences between each option and choose the one that best fits your needs.

Single Instance (Standalone)Single Instance (Remote DB)Multi-Instance (Standalone)Multi-Instance (Remote DB)
Best for

Small and predictable workloads.

On-premises, CSPs or Docker

Small workloads, with managed services.

On-premises, CSPs or Docker

Medium workloads, manual scaling.

_ _

CSPs or Kubernetes

Medium to Large workloads, no auto-scaling.

CSPs or Kubernetes

Scalability NO NO YES YES
High Availability NO PARTIAL YES YES
Auto-Scale Ready NO NO NO YES
Recommended MD Cores2-44 or more4 or more4 or more
Recommended ICAP Servers1-22-42 or more2 or more
Infrastructure complexity 1/5 3/5 5/5 4/5

Overall performance and file throughput of the solution will depend on a variety of factors. When sizing your deployment, first consider the sizing requirements for MetaDefender Core. When adequately provisioned, ICAP Server can support the file traffic for up to (3) MetaDefender Core instances. In most cases, a ratio of (1) ICAP Server for every (2) MD Core servers is the best balance of performance, throughput and capacity.

This table describes a subset of the configuration and sizing options for MetaDefender ICAP Server. If more detailed technical sizing is required, please contact your sales engineer or representative.

  • The raw ICAP capacity is useful for cases when MetaDefender Core is going to be deployed to a separate server.

** The ICAP + Core capacity is useful for cases when MetaDefender Core is going to be deployed to the same server as MetaDefender ICAP Server.

Sizing Examples

MetricValueValue
Number of simultaneous users (threads)10100
Data throughput (kB/s)80058070
Request throughput (req/s)97.9128065497.31414474
Total requests35934355002
Total time3673648
CPU Cores2`8
RAM8 GB16 GB

Load values with 10 threads (left) / 100 threads (right)

Load Chart with 10 threads (left) / 100 threads (right)

  1. MetaDefender Core connection was disabled to eliminate potential bottleneck caused by Core
  2. 100 ms delay was applied between requests
  3. Each user (thread) requested the whole dataset 10 times
  4. Files were requested in a randomized fashion

Test Environment

Traffic Mix

File TypePercentage of traffic
Archive (zip)2.8%
Image2.5%
Microsoft Office10.7%
PDF1.5%
Windows executable (exe)24.2%
HTML19.6%
Text37.3%
Total98.6%
Rounding error1.4%
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