Here's the Scenario I'm looking at: I'm building a POS Tracking/Analysis Database (7million rows and growing quickly in the main table). Using FMP8 to prototype the solution, and I have some very long running tasks (a weekly import normally runs 8+ hours). Some of the aggregations needed take similarly long.

The solution I'm thinking of is running server and client in my usual Administration account, and then running a second client either in a second account, or inside VMWare. Has anyone had any experience with this? It would be ideal for these long running tasks to execute in the seperate account/VM.

As for the machine it should be ok. It's a AthlonXP 64 4000+, 2GBs of Ram, 100GB 7200rpm Seagate, I normally operate with one VM running so I drop down to 1.5GBs free.

Also hoping the move to server will improve stability. Everytime the import fails the POS Table is cooked.

Importing into a hosted file takes longer (naturally) then importing into a local file.

Do you want to run FM Server and Client on the same machine: don't! It will hurt performance and you risk corrupting your files.

Put FMS on its own machine. You can certainly run FMP in VMware to have a 2nd "instance" of client on your machine.