Which process is heavier, FTP pull or push?

[myr001]

Hi Xperts,

There is a server pushing files (FTP) to our server since long but now we are planning to chnage it to pull mode, i-e our server will frequently get files using FTP.

Just want to understand if there is any difference between these two FTP modes from performance (resource utlilization) point of view on our sever.

[Torsten.]

IMHO there is no significant difference since the same amount of data is transferred over the network.

[myr001]

Thanks Torsten.

One more point. If we pull files we have to delete them as well which means one extra task load on our server. Will it be negligible even if 1000s of files are being pulled?

[Mel Burslan]

This is not from experience but just an educated guess, deleting them locally might be a better solution as you do not have to acknowledge deletion of a file over an ftp connection, if they are to get deleted from a remote server over an ftp session.

Just an idea.

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

I wouldn't expect a significant difference,
but I also have approximately no detailed
information on what you're doing now or what
you intend to do differently.

Why not just run the experiment? I'd trust
reality over any opinion I got in a forum
like this.

> If we pull files we have to delete them as
> well which means one extra task load on our
> server. Will it be negligible even if 1000s
> of files are being pulled?

It means sending one more FTP command, and
getting one more FTP response, per file. All
the serious work is done by the other
(server) system.

If I had thousands of files to move from one
system to another, then using FTP to transfer
them one-by-one is probably not the method
I'd choose to do it.

[Steven Schweda]

Also, ...

> [...] a server [...]

> [...] our server [...]

Not very detailed descriptions of anything.

uname -a

> [...] performance (resource utlilization)
> point of view on our sever.

Where's the bottleneck? Is your network
connection so fast that any FTP activity
actually matters on "our server"?

[myr001]

Thanks everyone for participating.

I think now I have got some idea how understand this scenario. I agree with Steven about running a real test. Unfortunately we have to stick with FTP at the moment.

[myr001]

Thanks.

[Dennis Handly]

>Unfortunately we have to stick with FTP at the moment.

I'm not sure if that was Steven's exact point.
I.e. you could tar and gzip a bunch of files and then only do one ftp.