Heavy Hardware Buildout

[Tori Mitchell]

Okay, so I've got a solution from heck here at the office and it's running on a paltry Apple G5 XServe Single Proc 2.0 Ghz with 3Gb RAM... Needless to say the application performance is way under par here. I'm rebuilding the IT Infrastructure for the building and as part of that, I'm replacing the primary FMS.

I've got to come up with a server which will be reliable, fast, FAST, **FAST**, and stable.

Currently looking at a dual-core Xeon with a ton of RAM, Hardware Raid on the HDD subsystem, and dual NIC's for the internal/external subnets. (assuming that I can get that hack working with FMS)

Question is: Is this overkill. I know that FMS has a cache limit and sketchy multi-proc support. **BUT** I also know that FMS9 is pretty harsh on hardware with the query engine now on the server side.

Comments, advice, opinions, free-for-all welcome.

P.S. - Does anyone know if FMS benefits from Quad-core? Can't imagine that it would but...

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Pretty good guesses al the way around. No benefit directly from quad processor, other than maybe a little smoother handling of the OS.

4 GB RAM is the most that the 32 bit version of Windows Server 2003 can support, so just stick with that.

Hard drive subsystem is vital. Use only UW SCSI drives for both speed and [color:red]reliability.

Set the FMS cache to the max (800 MB) and just leave it there.

RAID isn't necessary, but it can be useful. [color:red]Be sure to use a hardware RAID controller, not a software one.

There is a lot more stuff in the Server tech Brief, and I am presuming you have read that.

Steven