I'm sure this has been talked about ad nauseum. We're in the hardware business (www.dealexpress.com) but we also use FM8 to run the company. I'm on a quad G5 but our server is an HP Blade system, dual Xeon MP 2.0 2mb. I'd like to know what the fastest server platform is, Mac or PC, and if dual (or more) processors is important. Cost is not an issue for us.

Edited February 6, 200619 yr by Guest

Huscat:

This does indeed get discussed from time to time. There are a couple of keys to high performance.

1. The FileMaker Server box should only be used for FileMaker. No file-sharing or anything else.

2. You should have the fastest drive system you can get. This deals with drive i/o, whicih can be one of the two major bottlenecks.

3. The other bottleneck is network speed, which isn't exactly server-specific, but obviously, the faster your network, the better your performance.

Otherwise, all the standard performance rules apply, regarding RAM, drive space, etc.

Regarding the Windows/Mac issue, I think it's a fairly tough call. I don't even know that anyone has done any performance metrics comparing the latest FM Server on the two platforms. Perhaps someone will chime in regarding that. Personally, I use Mac servers for all of my installations.

-Stanley