Forum Discussion
OneDrive Client, Files on Demand and Syncing large libraries
I've been struggling with a migration that we did for a client earlier in the year. We moved all their documents from an old on-prem file server into various Sharepoint libraries, and have them synced down to the client workstations with OneDrive / Files on Demand. The libraries are big (199k items), but still well inside the limits of the service. However, we've been experiencing all manner of problems with using it in practice - OneDrive sync agent errors, very slow sync, etc. What you've outlined above goes a long way to explaining why we've been seeing the problems that we have.
I'm glad that you've been working with the OneDrive team on this, and I'm REALLY looking forward to the product updates that you've alluded to. They can't come quickly enough for me.
Cheers,
Matt
They are working towards higher limits. Part of the problem stems from the fact that they were trying to bring the Cloud Experience down to the desktop with the highest fidelity possible. By most measurements, they succeeded. For example, renaming or moving files can be completed without downloading the file to the desktop, it simply brokers the API calls that complete the action in OD or SharePoint. This is super cool, but it begins to fall over when the number of objects starts to increase.
Windows itself was never designed to really support this sort of integration, so there isn't any robust or elegant way to poll the drive and ask "What Changed?". This leaves it up to the client itself to have to scan periodically for changes to Files on Demand content, even if it hasn't been downloaded, because action can still be taken on those objects.
While I can't give you any specific number, I can tell you that the total number of objects their client is about to be able to handle without crashing is significantly higher. But that's really just the first step, while the client is getting more bullet-proof when handling large numbers of objects, there is still more work to do on performance. The more objects you bring down, the longer it will take for the client to detect changes and complete a replication either to or from the cloud.
They are making significant headway, and I can assure you they care more than you might imagine about the limits the client can handle, hang in there, it's getting better ;)
