FMSA7 Not Dual Processor

[Xas]

I examined the CPU activity when FMSA7 was running as of recent and detected that both processors are not engaged on my dual 2.0 gHz G5. No matter what the query is, only one processor shows any activity in the Apple Activity Monitor. I think FM has lied about the server capable of being dual processor.

[Matt Klein]

I examined the CPU activity when FMSA7 was running as of recent and detected that both processors are not engaged on my dual 2.0 gHz G5. No matter what the query is, only one processor shows any activity in the Apple Activity Monitor. I think FM has lied about the server capable of being dual processor.

What makes you think that FMSA takes advantage of more than one processor? I seem to remember Tony Miller(Senior Systems Engineer, FileMaker Inc.) stating that it wouldn't take advantage of multiple processors in his session at DevCon.

[John May - Point In Space]

FMSA7 does not work properly with dual processors, on both Windows and OS X, and in fact the use of dual processor machines can cause crashes. To disable a processor on a Mac, see the following:

Note that FMSA8 fixes this problem (supposedly, according to FMI).

- John

[Xas]

Hate to disappoint, but nearly ALL of FMP inc. sales literature and product reviews clearly say' - "FileMaker Server 7 is coming early this summer. It's still limited to 250 concurrent clients and 125 hosted databases, but Wide Area Network (WAN) performance has been dramatically improved, according to FileMaker, and data transfer can be encrypted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL). FileMaker Server 7 is also now optimized for dual-processor machines...." [color:gray]Maybe you are mixing up this "While FileMaker itself is capable of running on a dual-processor system, the Web Companion module that it uses to communicate with middleware such as Lasso or PHP is not. "

I specifically bought FMPSA7 because of Filemaker Inc. website claims of 64 bit dual processor support. It was clearly stated then and not now. They have cleaned their site of any product literature for 7. You are protecting FMP and I doubt you are getting paid either. Why I never checked this before is kind of naive of me. Now shake your head and read on.

Reading directly from Page 7 (Filemaker software documents that I paid for), of the 'Upgrading to Filemaker 7: Migrating Existing Solutions'

Under "More Server Power"... Filemaker Server is radically enhanced...More processing is done on the Server and it can now take advantage of multiple processors and additional RAM . . .

Am I reading something into this that you interpret differently? When did the English language change??

[Martin Brändle]

To clarify: The dual-CPU problems only occur with the web publishing part of FMS7A, see

http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5303

Indeed we had to turn one CPU on our WPE/web server off, however on our FMS7 DB server still both CPUs run. It is not completely clear if FMS7 takes advantage of this, see the CPU usage graph for the last 6 hours; the curves are a little bit different which shows that the load is distributed +/- to both CPUs. However, a second CPU may help if also other applications would run on the server; this, however, is not recommended practice, e.g. a FM server should be dedicated only to FMS.

I had already made some tests with FMS8A on a test dual-CPU machine; the CWP pages that made problems on a dual FMS7A dual-CPU server don't do anymore.

[John May - Point In Space]

Thanks for the detailed report Martin!

- John

[Xas]

Here is FMSA7 (no web companion) handling a query that searched through 4 million records. Note that one CPU is handling all the work.

[Martin Brändle]

No just do a second search from another client at the same time and watch.

[Xas]

Okay - On a second search using 2 separate clients I got this. Eureeka. Both CPU's came alive. THEN WHY DOES FM say this has been corrected in version 8 of FMPSA?? I have been testing it using a single client. Single client does not invoke multi-threading apparently.

Picture_5.pdf

Edited January 24, 2006 by Guest

[John May - Point In Space]

There's really no good way to use multiple processors for a single request.

What FMI is talking about is the bug in the WPE with dual-processor systems - that is what has been fixed with FMSA8.

- John

[Martin Brändle]

From a programmer's point of view, searches are pretty bad to parallelize or to split into multiple threads. The database search algorithm has to walk through a decision tree of hashed index terms. Each decision depends on the previous decision and therefore the steps must be processed in serial order.

Sorts are much better, because they can be split into chunks.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

A single action is not split between processors. When FileMaker Server polls the OS with a processor request, the OS will assign it to the one where it is most likely to finish first. That might be the first; or it might be the second, depending on what else FMS is asking for from the OS.

May I recommend the Server Tech Brief at:

http://www.filemaker.com/support/upgrade/techbriefs.html

Steven

[Martin Brändle]

Xas, I would strongly recommend to upgrade to FMSA 8v02.

We did that since a week, and are happy with the following observations:

- FMS consumes much less CPU load: 5-10% peak height with FMS 8v2 vs. 20-40% with FMS 7v4.

- the WPE runs flawlessly with dual-CPU. No errors, nothing.

[NYPoke]

Can I assume from this discussion the Server 5.5 doesn't even pretend to use multiple processors?