title: What are practical limits on the number of FileSystemWatcher instances a server can handle?
body: <p>I have a windows service that is currently instantiating about a dozen <code>FileSystemWatcher</code> instances to monitor shared folders across the corporate network for files to be processed. </p>
  
  <p>I am looking into adding more instances so I'm wondering if anyone here has experience (with production systems) as to what are practical limits on number of <code>FileSystemWatcher</code> instances a production system can reliably handle?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: In my case, the InternalBufferSize property is not modified so the InternalBufferSize is the default 8 KB... I assume the increase in InternalBufferSize would affect the number of <code>FileSystemWatcher</code> instances a system can run simultanesouly so that is also a part of the equasion...</p>
  
  <p>Edit: If you think that this is exclusively a resource issue and it only depends on the amount of available memory or some other hardware aspect of the system, please share your experience or links to documentation or articles that corroborate your opinion... I would really like to hear from someone who reached the limit in production regardless of their hardware specs so please before voting to close consider that 7 other people in less than 20 minutes have shown interest in hearing from someone who pushed the limits on this...</p>