Performance Implications of Using Connection Manager

Connection Manager replaces the single connection between MFTIS and the target server (for example, Oracle DB) with three connections (MFTIS-CMA, CMA-CMS, CMS-Oracle). The TCP connection establishment therefore takes longer when using Connection Manager as compared to direct connections initiated by MFTIS. When connecting to internal servers that require many connections (For example, MFTIS connections to Oracle DB), it is best to minimize the number of connections established. Use of MFT connection pooling minimizes the number of TCP Connections created between MFTIS and the Oracle DB Server.

There is also slight performance degradation when MFTIS uses Connection Manager to send bulk to internal servers. For example, MFTIS often needs to send gigabytes of data to the MFT Platform Server in the internal network. Instead of sending the data over a single connection, the data will needs to be sent over multiple connections (MFTIS-CMA, CMA-CMS, CMS-Platform Server). There are many variables that affect the performance of file transfers using Connection Manager: Client network bandwidth, file size, and latency. At best, there should be negligible performance differences between direct connections. Initial tests showed approximately 10%-15% performance degradation when used in a high volume, low latency, fast network. After the connections are made, the CMA and the CMS just pipes data from the source connection to the target connection and therefore uses very little CPU and very little memory.

To save CPU cycles, data is piped to the remote destination exactly as sent/received by MFTIS. If you want to encrypt the data, then you should configure MFT-IS to use secure protocols.