Quantifying your Repository

by Rachel Lynn — May 10, 2022

An essential part of preparing to migrate content to a new platform is understanding the size of your repository. Knowing what types of works, how many objects, and how large the files help determine what disk space you’ll need. It also helps avoid unexpectedly running out of disk space in the middle of the import process.

At DCE, we typically begin custom development projects with a Design & Scoping Engagement. This series of meetings is tailored for collaboration with our customers to determine requirements and raise any challenges or opportunities. An important part of this phase includes a thorough Content Assessment.

Whether migrating from an existing repository platform or starting fresh, knowing the size and configuration of your repository will determine your system needs. Here are some questions to think about as you begin to quantify your repository.

Content inventory

  • What are all the digital content types to be managed by the platform?

    • Images, audio, video, etc.?
  • How many objects of each type?
    • Think about how many objects currently exist and the typical rate of growth.
  • What is the average size of objects in each group?
    • Think about the approximate maximum size of objects in each group.

Prioritized content

  • Are you planning a phased migration?
  • Is there some content that should be migrated first? Later? Last?
  • What are the potential groupings?
    • By content type (still images, text-based documents, audio, video, 3D datasets, etc.)
    • By source system (oldest legacy first, not online second, etc.)
    • By collection

Summary

Whether you are preparing for a big migration project or researching the options for a brand new repository, assessing your content is an essential first step. You’ll be ready to determine your system needs by answering these questions. Having quantified your repository, you have the information needed to provide to your internal systems engineers or to help you compare hosted pricing packages.

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