Groove File Sharing workspaces should be limited to 50 or fewer

 [Update 5/8/09 -- fixed in Office Groove 2007, SP2. See https://support.microsoft.com/kb/968769]

 A customer ran across a previously unknown limitation in Groove, recently. It turns out that if an installation of Groove has a lot of Groove File Sharing (GFS) workspaces -- fifty or more -- you may see serious performance problems. With older versions of Groove, the Groove UI can freeze.

File Sharing workspaces, for those of you not familiar with them, are Groove workspaces that synchronize regular Windows folders. Unlike Groove Standard workspaces, they don't encrypt and compress the files kept in them -- those files are still out in the Windows file system, accessible to other applications without going through Groove. Handy? Absolutely. When my old laptop had its hard disk die, I was able to tell IT that I didn't need any of the data from it -- all my work documents were on my desktop as well. Would I ever have thought that someone would have more than fifty of these workspaces? Well, no. I think of myself as using Groove fairly intensively, and I've never had more than three. (Currently, I have two.) I mainly use Standard workspaces that are focused around a particular project or job element. Typically, these have a few Discussion tools, a Calendar tool, a Files tool, and sometimes Forms-based tools, and having those elements together is important to me. Can I imagine a work environment where one might use primarily GFS workspaces? Yes. If Groove is synchronizing files that need to be available from another application, and you work primarily from that application, it could make sense. An individual wouldn't usually have fifty such workspaces, but in a data integration scenario, where automated processes are using the workspaces, the number becomes more understandable. Unfortunately, it apparently wasn't a usage pattern that our engineering group anticipated.

So, what causes the problem? Since Groove doesn't have control over the files in the GFS workspace, it needs to track all of them to know when they've changed. (See https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;916422 for an example of how Groove tries to detect move operations within the synchronized folder.) When Groove starts up, it creates for each GFS workspace a system event that provides it with the means to monitor file system operations in that synchronized folder. If Groove runs out of available events, the problem occurs, and Groove enters a loop that eventually consumes all processor cycles. In Groove Virtual Office 3.1, Groove also freezes soon after startup.

Currently, if you're in this situation, the only solution is to delete one or more of the GFS spaces so that Groove can manage the number remaining. In Groove 2007, this is fairly easy, because you can still use the Groove Launchbar, with patience. In Groove Virtual Office, you need to delete a GFS workspace quickly, before Groove freezes.

If you need to do this, keep in mind that deleting a File Sharing workspace from your computer in Groove does not delete the folder or its contents from the file system -- it removes the Groove synchronization for that folder. So you'll still have the local folder, but you will no longer be a member of the workspace, and Groove won't receive changes that other workspace members make to their copies of the files, or send out changes that you make to yours.

Obviously, we're looking at options for mitigating the situation. I'll keep you up to date on any changes.