Macs for Server/Unlimited

[sdennie]

I've been experimenting for a while getting our DBs online, and am ready to go whole-hog. Our traffic will be relatively light. We have just ten people accessing our DBs over the LAN, and I anticipate no more than 100 web accesses on any given day.

Everyone says to keep Server and Unlimited on separate machines, and to put Server on the fastest machine you can afford. But being inexperienced, I don't know how much hardware I need. Here's what I'm looking at. Tell me if I need to revise my thinking.

1. I'm looking at getting a G4 800 mhz single processor Mac for FM Server. (Should I think dual processor, or doesn't that really matter here?)

2. Does Unlimited need a fast machine, too? I'd love to use my existing G3 267 mhz server for Unlimited. Money's tight, and I'd prefer not buying yet another server. But I'm guessing you folks will tell me the G3 Server won't do the job.

I'm already running the web server on a new G4 DP, and the email server is doing great on a G4 400. The G3 Server has worked well hosting Filemaker DBs on our LAN, but I suspect it's out of its depth on the web. I'd love to hear, "Sure, it'll work just fine with Unlimited."

Steve

[Kurt Knippel]

For any server machine (even desktop machines for that matter) you want to but the fastest machines that budget will allow. That said, Filemaker Server is not really a processor driven app, but disk driven and thus a faster harddrive will serve to far better than a faster processor.

Unlimited can run on any workstation system and I would not recommend a server class system until you can test performance of your Unlimited system.

[Garry Claridge]

As Kurt said you should be fine with what you have. However, I recommend running OS X (Server version, of OS X, is not needed).

All the best.

Garry

[sdennie]

Thanks for the help. Some follow-up:

How fast of a hard drive? Is 10,000 speed fine? 7200? Or is there something faster out there that I should consider?

Kurt--are you saying that Unlimited really doesn't put much of a demand on the workstation? Might an iMac G3 do fine with it?

I've spent all afternoon reformating my G3 Server and installing OSX, and it's just not taking. Won't recognize the hard disk. I'm guessing there are too many cards with drivers involved (for ethernet 100base, and for USB/Firewire ports). My preference is always just to start fresh. So I'm thinking of reinstalling OS9 and passing the machine on to someone else who's got a pre-G3 machine.

[Kurt Knippel]

Of you can get the 10,000RPM drive with good seek and transfer rates then do so, it will only make things faster. You can also consider using RAMBunctious from Clarkwood Software and running the databases out of RAMDisk. We do this on 5 servers (400mhz Cubes) and it works GREAT!

I cannot image a G3 iMac not working perfectly as an Unlimited machine. In fact at one time this is what Apple used for thier support site, a RAIC of iMacs. Eventually they switched over to a WebObjects system, but still it worked for one of the biggest companies in the world. It should work for you.

[LiveOak]

Remember, that in serving to the web, FM Unlimited is single threaded. It can only service one request at a time anyway. If your web interface is a T1 line, this is something like 1.5BasedT (you network is probably 100BasedT). In this application, the limiting factor is probably not machine speed.

-bd

[Anatoli]

Generally I do agree.

But for Unlimited I will go with fastest machine from one point of view.

If your 100 visitors will visit the site in single hour and each will have 100 requests, that is 2.78 full transaction per second. In fact it can be 5-10 full transactions per second in peak time.

Visitor will generate full transaction request if he/she will request next page in list of records. Unlimited must do the full search, sort and skip and serve result. If your machine will do 1 transaction in 1 second, in the above model user will wait 2-10 seconds for reply.

If this is not your scenario, then almost any machine will do.