Sizing recommendations for PAM session recording storage file system

Products

• CA Privileged Access Manager - Cloakware Password Authority (PA)
• CA Privileged Access Manager (PAM)

Issue/Introduction

How much disk space do we need to store PAM Session Recording data?

Environment

Privileged Access Manager

Resolution

There is no actual number we can give you, because this sizing varies from environment to environment. Our general guidance is: Web portal = ~1MB per minute of recording, RDP sessions = ~.5MB per minute, SSH sessions = .005MB per minute. So, it is more a matter of usage than number of assets.

Please note that the content of what is being done actually has the most impact on the size of the recordings and resolution can also make a big difference. Please take a look at the results from lab tests CA PAM Support team has done (each session listed below was ~3 minutes long with the default settings in Global settings):

- RDP Keyframes Duration: Small (Fast Seek/Large File)
- Web Recording Quality: High

1) Staring at a black screen (no desktop background, display desktop icons off, limited mouse movement):

800x600: 70 K
1920x1080: 71 K

2) Reading on wikipedia (text with limited images):

800x600: 2.58 M
1920x1080: 3.6 M

3) Scrolling through images on yahoo images (all pictures):

1024x768: 70.26 M
1920x1080: 224.21 M

-- If you wish to decrease the recording sizes you should consider changing RDP Keyframes Duration and Web Recording Quality in the settings.

Additional Information

For any further information regarding sizing and capacity planning, please ask CA Pre-Sales and/or CA Services to get the information you need. It is not something handled by CA Support, because it is related to customer environment assessment, architecture and the implementation itself. The focus of CA Support team is on troubleshooting.