Have just upgraded to a 3 machine RAIC and web connector

[Simon]

I have just implemented a three machine RAIC and web connector on my website and can not believe the performance change I am now seeing.

My set up is a 500MHZ Pentium 3 with 500MB Ram running Filemaker Server 5 two 1GHZ P3 with 384MB Ram running Filemaker UNlimited 5 and one of these machines with IIS5 running web connector. All running under Windows 2000 Server.

I have found the following great advantages.

1. Obviously the fact that now when one database is busy the other serves the next request.

2. Then IIS sends the data to the browser so that web companion can get on doing the next request and obviously IIS is multi threaded.

3. Security is so much better as web connector is hitting databases set to serve on an internal ip address not an external one.

4. I now have 55 databases serving the website, which with just one copy of filemaker was not possible. I have the least used ten open 5 on one machine and 5 on the other.

5. Filemaker server now does its backups once a night and that is automatically put on tape 1 hour later.

6. People now access the website on port 80 instead of a second port number and internally web connector hits port 8080 or 591. I have found the 591 is not a port that corporates have access to as company firewalls often only have the very necessary ports open to access, obviously port 80 is one of them.

Overall my experience has been very rewarding and has taken my use of filemaker on the web to a new level. I knew I could do all I wanted on filemaker but its web access and reliability were starting to cause me big problems. This seems to have given it a new lease of life.

Just thought you lot would like to read about it. It is a step that I think a lot of people should think about if they get quite a high level of usage. My site has over 5000 new registrations a month and currently has 30,000 or so users. This was killing just fM unlimited on its own.

Any points about above would be eagerly waited.

Simon

[scratchmalogicalwax]

it has been said before on this forum that if you set up FMPro and your web server properly there is no need to spend tens of thousands of pounds or dollars on and enterprise solution.......I found similar performance gains when i upgraded to lasso and again when using a RAIC. (just think how good it could be if you were using Macs ! )

Also the backup advantages of using FMPro server are a real bonus on top of the performance gain.

It's nice to hear another success story with FMPro

[ July 23, 2001: Message edited by: scratchmalogicalwax ]

[Anatoli]

quote:

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Originally posted by scratchmalogicalwax:

...just think how good it could be if you were using Macs...]

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Macs are Great machines for million tasks, but NT (2000) system with FM is running 2-3 times faster than the same on Mac. And never crashes.

I hope the Mac OS X will get faster and faster and will eventually beat the NT/2000 Microsoft stuff.

And the X is promising me the NT/2000 robustness. You know it was the team from Digital Equipment developing the NT. Without that the whole Microsoft will have no decent OS today.

[John May - Point In Space]

Anatoli -

Just wondering where you're getting your stats on Mac vs. NT. The general opinion we've heard is that they're both about the same speed. And we rarely see crashes with our Filemaker Mac machines here...

- John

[Anatoli]

quote:

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Originally posted by John May - Point In Space:

Anatoli -

Just wondering where you're getting your stats on Mac vs. NT. The general opinion we've heard is that they're both about the same speed. And we rarely see crashes with our Filemaker Mac machines here...

- John

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John, just try that. In fact I know installation with 50 Mac FM clients which switched from Mac server to the NT FileMaker server.

First reason is multithreading and preemptive multitasking. Not really good on Macs.

Second the network speed. TCP/IP is glued to the Mac OS and it suffers some performance hit.

Sure, even without this multi-multi-multi stuff, Mac workstation can be more productive during the day workload than NT. But as pure data spitting server Mac OS cannot beat NT. But as I wrote I am waiting for MacX to get better and better....

And believe me or not, I never ever saw FM server crash on NT. Also our main Unlimited server didn't crashed yet and it is running from v. 4, then 5 still without single crash.

Obviously Macs are 100 times better than the W95 and W98 gizmos!