Determining the Baseline for Your Merges
The merge characteristics of your system depend on many factors, including the size of your forests, the amount of update activity on the system, and the way your data is fragmented. If you feel you need to change the configuration of your merges, the first step is to determine the merge characteristics for your database. This requires running your system under normal loads, then analyzing the log files to determine the following data about your merges:
average size of the merges
average frequency of the merges
average time it takes for the merges to complete
If it turns out that your merges are never taking more than a few minutes to complete, then there is probably no need to change any of your settings.