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Ingesting large-scale digital assets in AEM on-premise

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Level 3

Hello Community,

I'm currently working on an AEM on-premise setup and need to ingest a significant volume (>15TB) of digital assets into the DAM. I reviewed the official Assets Migration Guide, which demonstrates a migration procedure using the ACS AEM Tools CSV Asset Importer. At the same time, I've come across another tool called Asset Ingestor that also appears interesting.

 

Assuming that the migration procedure outlined in the guide represents best practice, I would appreciate insights on the following:

  • Tool Comparison: Between the ACS AEM Tools CSV Asset Importer and Asset Ingestor, which tool is more suitable for large-scale ingestion of digital assets?
  • Performance & Scalability: Are there notable differences in performance or scalability between these tools?
  • Reliability & Ease of Use: What are the key factors or considerations (e.g., error handling, partial failure handling, logging, and ease of integration) when choosing one over the other?

Any shared experiences, performance benchmarks, or additional considerations would be very helpful.

Thank you in advance for your guidance!

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3 Replies

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Level 1

The closest I found was this - https://medium.com/@bsaravanaprakash/how-we-migrated-a-million-assets-into-aem-cloud-service-dam-ef7... (hope you can use some of it for AEM on-premise as well since this is mostly cloud)

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Level 3

Thanks, it's an interesting article, but it's focused on working with cloud instances. On the other hand, I'm trying to understand if anyone here has experience with Asset Ingestor and CSV Asset Importer. Ideally, I'm looking for a comparison between the two to determine which one is better suited for my use case.

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Level 3

I could not find any performance benchmarks, which would have helped deciding on the right tool. I still need some guidance to choose between the tools.


Here is the information I gathered about both tools:

 

FeatureAsset IngestorCSV Asset Importer
Processing Speed

Parallel ingestion with no DAM workflows (via inhibition)

Optimized for raw asset uploads

Sequential batches with throttling

Requires manual workflow management for optimal speed

Workflow HandlingBypasses DAM Update workflows entirelyRequires disabling workflows manually to avoid slowdowns
Batch SizeUnrestricted parallel processingLimited by user-defined batch sizes (e.g., 5-100 assets per batch)
LatencyMinimal (local/network directory access)Higher (relies on pre-staged assets or network paths)
Limitations

Only compatible with AEM 6.5.

No native metadata mapping (requires post-import updates)

Requires CSV template preparation

Delta imports (updates) incur additional overhead associated with updating existing assets