Hi,

Would FM Server 8 run well on a machine with an Intel Celeron D?

Thanks in advance!

No. The Celeron is a budget processor meant for desktops. It's not a server processor.

Thank you Wim.

Also, what would be the minimum requirements for a machine that will run FMS 8, in order to be accessed remotelly from 5 different locations including some offices in South America? (1 user per office) According to the FM website it should at least be a Pentium 4 with 1 Gigabyte (recommended) of RAM. Would this be enough for an acceptable performance? Thanks a lot in advance

No.

You really need 2 GB RAM. And for WAN access I'd also use dual NIC cards so one could be dedicated to WAN, and the other to LAN.

Get a good quality server with Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition installed.

Steven

Thank you for your quick response. This is for a non-profit with a very limited budget, so unfortunately can't afford a Server machine, plus W 2003 Server software ... would the performance still be acceptable? (remote locations would basically do minimum data browsing, about a couple of records per hour - max two portals per screen, max 30 fields per screen, no images in layouts) Thanks very much again.

Any chance you could get a Mac? Wait, before you say "No", consider these items:

1. the Intel Mac mini, with 8.0v4, should be smoking fast. The core duo chip is just incredible.

2. Mac is inherently more secure as there just aren't any viruses out there. One can argue all day why this is, but it's true.

3. If the organization is windows only, making the server be a Mac can have some advantages: Namely that nobody will mess with it once you set it up. Many tales of woe begin with a filemaker server when some low level employee decides to enable file sharing on it... Making sure everyone understands this is "THE FILEMAKER SERVER -- DO NOT TOUCH" can be a useful thing.

Just my $0.02.

I disagree on all three counts.

A miniMac is not a useful machine for FileMaker Server, especially given the requirements the original poster had for the system. The miniMac drives are substandard, and it doesn't have sufficient RAM.

The myths persist that Macintosh OS X is not vulnerable to various security issues. McAfee thinks otherwise and has so stated, as but one example. And the threat vectors to a FileMaker Server and the files it hosts do not run along the OS exploit lines. The threats are to the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of the data in the files.

Finally, introducing a different platform into an environment usually doesn't make much sense. If this were a Mac OS shop, I would likely not recommend introducing Windows Server into the mix.

Steven

Thank you all for your responses. They are finally buying a Pentium 4 with 2 Gigs of RAM, they just can't afford a more powerful machine. At least this is better than an Intel Celeron! I'm curious to see how good (or bad) the performance is ...

They are finally buying a Pentium 4 with 2 Gigs of RAM,

Should be pretty good, unless it's a junker of a machine.

Steven

Mac mini drives are indeed slow. However, they do accept up to 2 gigs of RAM. It is my opinion that drive speed is much less of a factor these days than in the FM5/6 era, because FMS does very good RAM caching. One of these days I'm going to set up a benchmark and see if my theory is correct. In the mean time, one can use an external firewire drive.

As for security -- you should do more research. Of course, McAfee, who is trying to sell you an anti-virus product, wants you to believe there is a danger of viruses on the mac. However, there has yet to be a single instance of a mac os x virus propagating in the wild, and this is with the vast majority of the users not running any antivirus software. Most of the trouble from viruses on the mac has actually come from crappy anti-virus software (symantec's stuff has a bad reputation). How many windows viruses are there, over 50000 at last count?

All I can say that is when running on Mac, I simply don't worry about viruses. When running Windows, it's one of the foremost thoughts in my mind at all times, and it gets quickly tiring.

Since the threat vectors to the databases aren't from viruses, the OS isn't a relevant variable.

The issue with the mini Macs isn't speed; it's physical drive integrity.

Steven

I run a 4 user system with FMS 8v3 on a Celeron 2.7 with 512 meg on memory and XP Home - on an eMachines computer to boot. Not within guidelines, but is stable and works well. No apparent problems after a year.

Well, here's the thing: nobody says it won't run. But it's a setup with a much higher inherent risk of failing. That risk is what you need to consider.

Wim and I and other developers who work with business clients frequently see systems that have unexpected and sudden failures. As a general rule, when these occur, a root cause is improper deployment and a failure to follow best practices, especially regarding hardware and network typology.

A very large portion of these failures are also characterized by inadequate or incomplete backup strategies, resulting in loss of vital business data. FileMaker Server is a very reliable service. But there are requirements for its proper configuration.

Pay attention to what Wim says. It is very good advice.

Steven