M365 content index >10 TB per node — scale up or scale out?

Hi Nikos - 

Out of curiosity, are you also approaching the object numbers (250 million) max that is listed as well?

Either way, your best bet is to scale out by adding more index nodes. 

https://documentation.commvault.com/2024e/software/adding_node_to_index_server.html

Thanks!

Tim

Hello ​@Tim C and thanks for your reply!

In this case, INDEX Server is also the MediaAgent and Access Node for Office 365 backup services.
The current index size is 3.43 TB, with a total of 97 million documents from OneDrive and SharePoint workloads. I'm worried and opened this thread because Exchange Online mailboxes (including journaling) are not backed up yet!

So, your approach is basically to proceed with scale-out instead of scale-up, right?

Best regards,
Nikos

Hey Nikos - 

Based on the information here, I think that would be the best approach. Once you start adding other workloads, you are going to start maxing out this one node quickly, especially because it is being shared for multiple roles. I would recommend, as a starting point, scaling out to another index node!

Hi ​@Tim C ,

This drives us to pick Scale-Out. Understand that recommended best practice for environments approaching or exceeding the “Large” tier is to scale out by adding additional index server nodes.

Also with Commvault’s load balancing and index redistribution features (to distribute index data across multiple nodes), we are looking forward to improve performance, resiliency, and manageability, and avoids risks associated with very large single-node indexes.