Perforce Consulting Services

Perforce Consulting offers experienced, world-class consultants who are available to work directly with you to help you get the most from your Perforce deployment. Perforce consultants are well-versed in the principles and best practices of Software Configuration Management (SCM), possess intimate working knowledge of the Perforce SCM system, and can make recommendations for further improvements to meet your business needs.

Consulting services can be scheduled on a daily or hourly basis, or you can choose from standard packages that cover initial server deployment and installation, performance tuning, and best practices implementation.

We are highly satisfied with the work performed onsite. Our experience with the consulting arm of Perforce was pleasant and went beyond our expectations. The onsite consultant presented himself in a professional manner, was very knowledgeable in the toolset, and did not hesitate to answer any of my questions. We will definitely consider using the consulting services for future projects.

Diane Guerrero, Principal Engineer, Time Warner Cable

Consulting Packages

The packages detailed here are based upon the most frequent requirements of Perforce customers and can be further tailored to meet the specific needs of your organization.

  • Server Deployment
  • Performance Tuning
  • Best Practices Audit and Assessment
  • Daily/Hourly Consulting

Server Deployment (2 days)

If you are bringing a new Perforce Server online, a consultant can ensure that you get started on the right footing by optimizing your Perforce installation and automating many of the administrative tasks. This includes:

  • Best practices recommendations for configuring your Perforce Server
  • Initializing depots, including a spec depot
  • Enabling automated email notifications for your users
  • Implementing initialization scripts on Unix and service configuration on Windows
  • Offline checkpoint capability
  • A utility to verify contents of all versioned files
  • Automated log rotation and journal backup
  • An initialization script for Perforce proxies
  • Inactive user monitoring (with optional removal)
  • User management scripts for cloning user access and group addition/removal
  • Maintenance scripts for label archiving, user maintenance, and emailing users
  • Determining appropriate defaults for server settings with regard to your environment
  • Comprehensive deployment training for your Perforce administrators

Performance Tuning Assessment (3 days)

A consultant will help analyze and address performance issues with your Perforce deployment by determining the root causes for the issues and documenting the recommendations for addressing them. The consultant will provide a thorough checkup of your Perforce infrastructure and, if needed, will:

  • Analyze your Perforce configuration
  • Review server hardware configuration
  • Analyze Perforce Server log and identify specific user requests that may cause performance issues
  • Review workspace configurations, branching practices, file metrics, and the protections table
  • Review automated processes interacting with Perforce, including continuous build systems and defect trackers
  • Run server performance benchmark tests to compare your hardware performance to known performance baselines established by Perforce

Best Practices Audit and Assessment (4 days)

A consultant will analyze your current Perforce deployment in terms of procedures and policies implemented for supporting user requirements and make recommendations in line with best practices. Additionally, if needed, the consultant will:

  • Review access controls and the protections table
  • Audit build and release practices and processes
  • Survey build and release scripts, or any other systems interacting with Perforce
  • Assess general system administration best practices, including management of users across multiple Perforce instances
  • Examine your branching strategy

Daily/Hourly Consulting

Perforce consultants are available to advise your organization on a daily or hourly basis. A consultant will work with you to formulate a Statement of Work (SOW) to define the objectives or deliverables you require. Consultants are available for:

  • Onsite consulting at a daily rate
  • Remote consultations on an hourly basis
  • Follow-on projects to support the implementation of any prior documented recommendations

How to Schedule Perforce Consulting Services

When scheduling services, please allow for two weeks advance notice. To request Perforce Consulting services or if the packages listed here do not meet your needs, please write to consulting@perforce.com or just call us.