As a general rule, the best option is to provide a virtual server unique to Diplomat MFT with a minimum of 2 CPUs or CPU Cores and 4GB of RAM.
Diplomat MFT is a native 64-bit, multi-threaded application that runs as a service on a server operating system. Its overall performance is dependent on many environmental factors and the nature and number of the transactions it’s processing. You may find more CPUs or more RAM to be necessary based on your peak loads, or you may find faster storage with higher IOPS to be more helpful.
NOTE: See How To: Update Java Service Parameters (Memory Allocation) to view, increase, or decrease the maximum system memory made available to the Diplomat MFT service.
Determining required system resources
Each system and network configuration is unique, and exact resources required are difficult to determine. With that caveat in mind, Diplomat MFT system resources requirements are a combination of memory, disk space, CPU, and network throughput required for processing peak concurrent transaction loads. Storage space may be required for both logging functions as well as temporary file caching and archiving.
Hardware utilization
The approximate hardware utilization shown below are based on 50 simultaneous simple file transfer jobs with associated keys and partners. The storage used for the actual transferred files, large or small, is NOT included.
| Diplomat MFT Component | Memory | Storage |
| Service | 1 GB | 250 MB |
| Scripting Agent | 500 MB | 100 MB |
| Remote Agent | 500 MB | 250 MB |
Disk space usage note
A minimum disk space of 2x the total files being processed concurrently during the peak period is required to accommodate the creation of temporary files during encryption and decryption operations. More may be required for zip and unzip operations as well. Saving archive copies locally will add to the total disk space requirement.
Additional resources during peak loads
Only the system running the Diplomat MFT Service is affected by peak transaction loads. Once you have calculated the CPU and memory resources needed, you will add them to the system resources used directly by Diplomat Managed File Transfer.
First, determine your peak transaction period. Review your file transfer jobs to determine when the highest volume of data is being transferred during the day. Diplomat MFT processes files in chunks for both encryption and file transfers. Typically, the memory and CPU to process a 1GB file is fairly similar to the resources to process many files that total 1GB.
Once you have determined the peak transaction period and the estimated peak volume being transferred, you can calculate whether your proposed system configuration can handle the throughput. To get an understanding of minimum requirements, we performed a worst-case-scenario test. We used a VM with a single CPU at 1.6GHz and only 1GB of memory running Windows to process 1GB of data with encryption/decryption, signing/verification, compression, and archiving to multiple locations, audit trail entries, and other features that might increase the overhead for a Diplomat MFT file transfer job. The jobs transferred files from an internal network location to an external SFTP server with (restricted bandwidth of 10Mbps downloads and 2Mbps uploads) and back to an internal network location.
In this scenario, the network bandwidth is the limiting factor. Processing one 1GB file outbound and then inbound took approximately 20 minutes in each direction.