Processors

[Gogargirl]

Friends, it's time to get some new hardware and I need your advice.....

It strikes me that how I use Filemaker, together with a little knowledge about how FM works, might make some choices more sensible than others. For example, I work on a notebook and it's usually plugged into the mains supply. I have a lot of related files and some are large with 1,000+ fields and lots of scripts (200+). Plenty of calculations too. I am usually online all the time and have a word processing program and graphics program open at the same time.

So what is FM's dream environment? I know that having as much RAM as possible is always recommended but to really get things zipping along, what kind of processor makes a difference to Filemaker performance - one with a high clock speed, or high bus speed? As I understand it, the clock speed will make the computer perform its calculations quicker, and the bus speed will govern how quickly the computer can access other info on the hard drive or in the memory. So depending on how FM works, there might be a preferred option.

Any ideas or recommendations please?

[LiveOak]

Don't suppose your are looking for a dual G4/OS X answer...

-bd

[Kurt Knippel]

Mostly processor does not mean a heck of alot to the day to day functioning of Filemaker. Like most databases, Filemaker is disk driven. All the RAM and processing power in the world will not help with a slow or fragmented hard drive.

The best Filemaker speed improvement you can make will be to get the fastest (seek and transfer rates) and most relaiable harddrive possible. If it is feasible running Filemaker out of a RAM disk is the best solution.

Obviously a faster processor will generally yield better performance for the system as a whole so this will make you more production, although I doubt that you'll notice much different in Filemaker.

[Gogargirl]

Thanks for your replies Brent and Kurt.

I've never seen myself as a mac wearer, but the idea's growing on me......

The RAMdisk idea is useful - can that be done on both platforms? (Sorry if that's a Homer Simpson question!)

Alison

[Guest]

The Seagate Cheetah Ultra Wide SCSI drives are excellent. Setting them in a redundant array is preferrable. They run at 10,000 RPM and about 5ms seek time.

PIII Xeon processors are great for serving. But of course the Dual 1GHz G4 is top of the line... that is, until the Intel Itanium chip becomes more developed and more available!!!

[LiveOak]

Doh! Not at all, a very good question. The RAM disk should work well as the relative speed of as spinning hard drive vs. semiconductor memory is about 10 ms vs. 10 ns or 1,000,0000:1. In reality on the Mac we see about a 2-3X improvement when running FM Server out of RAM disk (of course a UPS is required). On the NT/Win2000 side, I've not tried this option. The principle is the same, but this like most solutions is probably driven by the practical considerations of NT and built-in or add-on RAM disk software. Perhaps Anatoli or one of our other NT gurus can jump in and answer this one.

One of the reasons we use Macs is the better interface to FM Server. You can open files, close files, disconned users, and manually run scripts all from the FM Server interface (OS 9, lose some of this in OS X, sigh!), all of which you can't do on NT without writing scripts. The Macs also do scheduled startups and power downs well. Our favorite Mac for FM Server is the G4 Cube, as it is so small we can get four on a server cabinet shelf. We have one installation with six Cubes and a G4 for an AppleShareIP 6.3 fileserver.

-bd

[Anatoli]

RE: Perhaps Anatoli or one of our other NT gurus can jump in and answer this one.

Nor really, I do not want to mess with Microsoft stuff. But the 15 000 RPM SCSI drivers will be better, that the old 7200 old ones by factor of 2 I guess.

RE: One of the reasons we use Macs is the better interface to FM Server. You can open files, close files, disconned users, and manually run scripts all from the FM Server interface (OS 9, lose some of this in OS X, sigh!), all of which you can't do on NT without writing scripts.

Not at all, The FMI server management system is excellent on NT. We can do all this but running the scripts. I never find any use for it. And on NT box after restart nobody must log in, because FM server is running as service. Another great thing with NT FM server is, that I do all maintenance for various servers from home ONLY through FileMaker! No consoles, no Timbuktu or VNC nothing. I can remotely manage users and databases any NT FM server in the world

As I wrote many times, I do prefer NT server over standard Mac by miles. In the same moment I will advice not to go to NT all Mac users. Without deep knowledge of NT stuff it will be horrible experience with lot of sleepless nights. But the same goes to MacX switch.