Help! Need to buy a new server!

[Jacob]

Hi all, I'm looking for a few good suggestions. I've recently been put in charge of a small DB supporting faculty and student records. We're running server 5.5 off of an old mac (OS 9) and using FMP6. Unfortunately, we've outgrown our old solution and are looking into upgrading to FM7. On the software side, we're pretty much set FMP7 with server 7 advanced. We're now looking into buying a new machine to run the server. We'd like to be able to utilize all the new features that FM server 7a has to offer, especially on the internet based access side. Any suggestions as to a cost-effective machine that will be able to handle a medium-sized load without difficulty?

Thanks!

[Jacob]

Hi all, I'm looking for a few good suggestions. I've recently been put in charge of a small DB supporting faculty and student records. We're running server 5.5 off of an old mac (OS 9) and using FMP6. Unfortunately, we've outgrown our old solution and are looking into upgrading to FM7. On the software side, we're pretty much set FMP7 with server 7 advanced. We're now looking into buying a new machine to run the server. We'd like to be able to utilize all the new features that FM server 7a has to offer, especially on the internet based access side. Any suggestions as to a cost-effective machine that will be able to handle a medium-sized load without difficulty?

Thanks!

[Jacob]

Hi all, I'm looking for a few good suggestions. I've recently been put in charge of a small DB supporting faculty and student records. We're running server 5.5 off of an old mac (OS 9) and using FMP6. Unfortunately, we've outgrown our old solution and are looking into upgrading to FM7. On the software side, we're pretty much set FMP7 with server 7 advanced. We're now looking into buying a new machine to run the server. We'd like to be able to utilize all the new features that FM server 7a has to offer, especially on the internet based access side. Any suggestions as to a cost-effective machine that will be able to handle a medium-sized load without difficulty?

Thanks!

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi Jacob

My reccomendation is to buy a Mac OS X G4 or G5 dual processor with so much RAM as you can affort. Use 2 hard drives and stribe then in eg. RAID 0

OS X is easy to use and very stable.

You could cut down to single processor.

The purchase price is probably more than if you buy a windows machine, but the maintenance of a mac is much less.

Finally, no matter what you choice may be, make sure to have backup

This was my opinion.

;-) Claus

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi Jacob

My reccomendation is to buy a Mac OS X G4 or G5 dual processor with so much RAM as you can affort. Use 2 hard drives and stribe then in eg. RAID 0

OS X is easy to use and very stable.

You could cut down to single processor.

The purchase price is probably more than if you buy a windows machine, but the maintenance of a mac is much less.

Finally, no matter what you choice may be, make sure to have backup

This was my opinion.

;-) Claus

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi Jacob

My reccomendation is to buy a Mac OS X G4 or G5 dual processor with so much RAM as you can affort. Use 2 hard drives and stribe then in eg. RAID 0

OS X is easy to use and very stable.

You could cut down to single processor.

The purchase price is probably more than if you buy a windows machine, but the maintenance of a mac is much less.

Finally, no matter what you choice may be, make sure to have backup

This was my opinion.

;-) Claus

[xochi]

FileMaker 7 makes much better use of RAM -- with a maximum cache size of 800MB (versus 40MB for server 5.5). Thus, for best performance, I'd say you want fast CPU and RAM, and hard disk speed is now less important (whereas in FM5/6 disk speed was critical).

The Mac OS X G5 XServes look to be great server machines, but may be overkill.

I'm currently experimenting with using older G4 powerbooks, with external 2.5 " FireWIre hard drives set up in a RAID-1 configuration. The big advantage here is the whole server can run on battery power for several hours (or, several DAYS if you also added a big UPS).

Mac Minis may make a good choice (if you on a budget or electricity is expensive), but they still seem hard to find in stock anywhere. Again, I'd use one or two external firewire drives to store the database, and perhaps use the internal drive for scripted backups only...

[xochi]

FileMaker 7 makes much better use of RAM -- with a maximum cache size of 800MB (versus 40MB for server 5.5). Thus, for best performance, I'd say you want fast CPU and RAM, and hard disk speed is now less important (whereas in FM5/6 disk speed was critical).

The Mac OS X G5 XServes look to be great server machines, but may be overkill.

I'm currently experimenting with using older G4 powerbooks, with external 2.5 " FireWIre hard drives set up in a RAID-1 configuration. The big advantage here is the whole server can run on battery power for several hours (or, several DAYS if you also added a big UPS).

Mac Minis may make a good choice (if you on a budget or electricity is expensive), but they still seem hard to find in stock anywhere. Again, I'd use one or two external firewire drives to store the database, and perhaps use the internal drive for scripted backups only...

[xochi]

FileMaker 7 makes much better use of RAM -- with a maximum cache size of 800MB (versus 40MB for server 5.5). Thus, for best performance, I'd say you want fast CPU and RAM, and hard disk speed is now less important (whereas in FM5/6 disk speed was critical).

The Mac OS X G5 XServes look to be great server machines, but may be overkill.

I'm currently experimenting with using older G4 powerbooks, with external 2.5 " FireWIre hard drives set up in a RAID-1 configuration. The big advantage here is the whole server can run on battery power for several hours (or, several DAYS if you also added a big UPS).

Mac Minis may make a good choice (if you on a budget or electricity is expensive), but they still seem hard to find in stock anywhere. Again, I'd use one or two external firewire drives to store the database, and perhaps use the internal drive for scripted backups only...