We have five copies of FMP 5.5 running in our office. One computer, which is only in use about 30 percent of the time, hosts the files, two network users use the files throughout the day, and two other users use them occasionally (avg 30 min-1 hr/day). Probably the most number of users of any one file at a given time is three, and usually three databases is all that is shared.

Does it make sense for an office this size to dedicate a separate computer and $1000 to run FileMaker Server? We have crashes occasionally, but for the most part it seems to work. It works better since I moved the files to a computer that is rarely used, because I believe most of the crashes were because of other programs running on the computer that hosted the files.

One thing I'm particularly interested is the practice of running the server on a RAM disk and saving the RAM contents back to the disk periodically. Can this be done with db's running on a regular FileMaker Pro host with the same benefits? Would writing the file to disk while it's in use create any problems with data integrity that wouldn't happen with FMServer?

You can get good enough computer for $400-500. Plus the server software.

As for RAM disk -- there is plenty of articles in this forum about RAM Server from administrators.

On Mac OS you can run FM client in RAM disk as server.

Is your data worth $1000? Get the server, it's worth it for the peace of mind of automatic backup alone.

I wouldn't run RAM disk on a client (non-server) version of FM. You also can't backup FM files while you have users logged on (nor can you kick them off). Server is a MUCH more stable hosting environment than client. Another benefit is that it is multi-threaded. If you have a user paused in a script with the client version hosting, it hangs everyone. Not so with server.

-bd