mac Setting up of X-Serve

[Richard Fincher]

Am just setting up new X-Serve as a dedicated Filemaker Server.

It has a flash drive with the OS on it, and a 3x1TB RAID5 set, which I'm just formatting/striping.

 

Now, I have to decide how to use the RAID set.  My first thought was to mount it somewhere like /Library/FileMaker Server/  but I'd be interested in any other comments.  Also, not sure if Mac OS X mounts volumes in quite the same way a Linux, perhaps a symbolic link is the way to go, something like (as root):

 

    mkdir /Volumes/Macintosh RAID/FileMaker Server

    ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh RAID/FileMaker Server  /Library

 

The essence is to keep frequently changing files off the main drive which is an SSD.

 

 

[Rick Whitelaw]

Where did you find a "new" X-Serve? I thought they had been gone for a couple of years.

 

Rick.

[Richard Fincher]

When I say "new" I mean new to me. It's actually a reconditioned one from a company in Suffolk who specialise in reconditioned X-Serves, (but they didn't have any dual CPU ones unfortunately) .

I tried putting in the aforementioned symbolic link before installing FMS, but it complained and removed it before continuing.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

What will be of most interest here is whether the X-Serve can run on an OS version late enough to support FileMaker Server 13. Please do keep us posted on that score.

 

Steven

[Richard Fincher]

Hi, the X-Serve I have (mid-2009) can run either MountainLion or Mavericks. At the moment I am running Mountain Lion, as that is what we standardise on. I recently saw a chart indicating compatibility of Yosemite, and it seems the 2009 X-Serve is on the list.

I'm still looking for a method of putting the /Library/FileMaker Server/. Directory on the RAID array. The symbolic link I put in pre install got removed. I could stop all services, move the FMS Library directory to the RAID, and put the symbolic link back in, but I was hoping that there was a more official way of doing this. It's very easy to do this kind of thing with Linux.

Here is the list http://www.ibtimes.com/os-x-yosemite-compatibility-find-out-if-your-mac-will-be-able-update-1594262

[Richard Fincher]

These guys were the vendor. http://www.scrumpymacs.co.uk/store/xserve.html They also advertise on eBay UK.

Still hoping one day it'll be possible to run virtualised Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. Not holding my breath.

After reading many threads on fmforums.com, decided to install Mac OS X non-server edition.

[Richard Fincher]

Oh dear.  Symbolic links don't appear to be the way to do this:

 

cd /Library

sudo mv FileMaker Server     /Volumes/Macintosh RAID/Library

ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh RAID/Library/FileMaker Server .

ls -l 

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    48 10 Oct 17:12 FileMaker Server -> /Volumes/Macintosh RAID/Library/FileMaker Server

 

 

 

(done after stopping all services in FM Server web control panel, and rebooting the server after the above command

 

help !

[Richard Fincher]

Hmm, that's the thing about Sysadmin, you can be so so close, and it'll still seem like you're getting nowhere. After reading this excellent document, I tried:

sudo launchctl start com.filemaker.fms

and it worked. Not sure why it didn't autostart, it did before.

[IdealData]

Autostart fails after upgrading OS X 10.9 beyond initial release.

Discovered this myself a few weeks ago.

Revert to initial Mavericks release works.

HTH

[Richard Fincher]

Am using Mountain Lion

[Richard Fincher]

I've ended up shelving my plans to run Mountain Lion on the SSD and FileMaker Server data etc.. on the RAID array. It seems pretty clear that FileMaker Inc don't want you to do this, and although I kind of got it working, I did find that official FMI updaters said that there was no valid install of FMS to update, when things were setup this way. I've now installed ML on the RAID and will boot from that and do everything from that.

Am a bit disappointed that my hardware vendor recommended so strongly that I get the SSD upgrade option to boot from,at several hundred pounds extra, because he knew I wanted to run FMS only, and I think he even said that they used an X-Serve this way in their own organisation under these conditions.

Ah well, perhaps I'll try again another time.