Best OS Version for Server 5

[geod]

Not a question about Mac vs Windows, but instead which is the best Mac OS version to run FMP Server 5 from. I seem to remember someone recommending 8.6. Clients are running version 9.1 and 9.2. Also how far down does one strip the extensions. Do you disable even things like Qtime, etc. Would appreciate any comments and rational behind them. Thanks.

gd

[LiveOak]

There is no single answer to this question because not all machines will run all operating systems. For instance, most G4's will not run an OS prior to 9.0.4. The major reason for not running the latest and greatest OS is that most of the new OS's just add features and not stability. The features are mostly of no use to FM Server. The same is true for extension like QuickTime. FM Server doesn't need or use it, it just takes up processor time and memory and offers potential conflicts with other extensions.

At one client installation we have great stability (based upon 6 server-years of experience) running four Mac G4 Cubes as FM servers. They run with a Dr. Bott KVM, a gHead adapter to assure proper video startup, Kickoff to provide watchdog protection and restart, and Deltec UPS's. We have fans built into the server shelf to assure they run very cool. They all have 1 GB of RAM and run Clarkwood Software (www.clarkwoodsoftware.com) ramBunctious as a RAM disk and Peek-a-Boo to control processor time allocation. Peek-a-Boo prevents speed loss if the Finder is clicked into the foreground. The G4 Cubes run 9.0.4 with very stripped down extensions. Reducing extension was our last step and produced a great increase in stability (why do we need a Microsoft library?). The above is not theoretical, we have done the experiments.

On older machines I would run 8.6. One of the problems with OS 9 is keychain. If you backup to network volumes of a file server you must use an AppleScript to mount the volumes because OS9 keychain screwed up auto mounting by always popping dialog boxes that Okey Dokey Pro won't click.

-bd

[Anatoli]

RE: Reducing extension was our last step and produced a great increase in stability (why do we need a Microsoft library?).

Sure you do not need that at all. But when I've striped also the Apple extensions (Control as right click, Apple menus etc.) stability increased 10-100 times.

The Mac was crashing 3 times a day, after that once in a week.

[Kurt Knippel]

We used to get once a week or so, some times less, sometimes more. After some serious extension clearing we have not had a crash in months. Totally unattended servers, and IT dream.

Only our ASIP server give us an occassional problem, but that is usually due to disk fragmentation.

[Anatoli]

It was an old Mac 4400

But after disabling extensions it is still running and because of less demanding applications it didn't crashed 6 months!