fm server on nt- optimal h/w config?

[geminix3]

any opinions about how to set up for optimal performance under nt? i'm about to buy a machine for our new production system, with about 50-60 users, up to 30 concurrent. none of us in IT are very familiar with optimizing fm under nt, and i'm wondering specifically if fm is multi-threaded, and if multi-processing makes any difference to it, or if a single, faster processor will perform best.

otherwise, all the usual junk is covered, i.e., raid5, as much RAM as we can justify, etc.

suggestions?

glenn

[Falcon91]

If your looking for reliability,an NT box set up properly with either SVC Pak 4 or 5, is bullet proof. The operative word here is "Properly". You will notice we didn't specify SVC Pak 6! Be sure and dedicate the box to just serving the FMP Database. "No Mail Server, Web Server Or Print Server services." Allocate about 20 Meg Ram in the Filemaker Server Setup Options... Use a 100 MPS Switch instead of a Hub ... The box itself should be a good quality SCSI 10,000 RPM system, with about 256K of Ram, dual processor board, "Intel" and a current PIII 500 - ? processor. We have been deploying on NT for several years and neither our clients or ourselves have lost even an hour of downtime... We dedicate all our database servers, regardless of which tool ie; SQL, Filemaker Server or Oracle we deploy. With the cost of hardware today you just can't go wrong. If you peruse the various forums for filemaker, you will notice most have far more server problem type postings on the Mac side.... With over 80% of the business world deploying on PC's you have to ask yourself why? ... Using the NT platform, be careful about applying Filemaker's patches ... For some reason, "can't seem to be explained by the fine folks at Filemaker" these so called patches cause nothing but problems... It has been our experience with Filemaker that their first offering is usually the best.. Test carefully before deploying these patches! This applies to the client workstations as well! .. The only other creavat to be aware of is your NT Event manager is going to be saturated with a lot of useless Filemaker entries... Our way of dealing with this annoying problem "Although not exactly elegant" is to set the Event manager file size up to about 100 meg and replace itself every seven days... One last thing, be sure and schedule a restart of any NT 4.0 servers at least one per week ... Not necessary with NT Server 2000 and SVC Pak 1.... Hope this helps. ... By the way, if you are going to have any need for WAN Types of connections, consider building up an second or third NT 2000 Server and deploying these conections via 2000 terminal server!!