Which platform is best? 2

[CJ]

We've had a few requests to move various FM databases from around campus to a central server. It's been a while since I've checked, so let me ask again:
Which platform would be best for a general-access general-purpose Filemaker Pro server; Mac or NT? I'm more concerned about stability than total performance, and there will be a few hundred users on this box, which caused our old Mac servers some troubles in the past.

Please no flames! I'm professionally agnostic. :-V Just like to hear of actual experiences to help us decide / convince the powers-that-be. Thanks!

 

[Schlogg]

CJ,
Are the campus workstations PC, MAC or mixed?
This is just a note of caution. Not sure if it is relevant.
One of my clients went from all MAC with FMP Server to a mixed system with an NT server. This caused horrendous problems. Eventually their hardware man recommended CITRIX as a wonderful solution to mixed platform problems. We limp along - just. FMP have told us quite specifically that FMP is not supported under CITRIX. We get strange bugs in scripts that work fine elsewhere.
Paul

 

[CJ]

Workstations are mixed, but probably more Mac than PC. We've got Citrix, but never dreamed of using it for Filemaker ;-) I just asked 'cause we had a FM4 server that started to choke with >30 users (Beige G3 box); but the NT server replacement didn't do much better.
CJ

 

[algin]

You might want to try FM 5 as more of an upgrade than the Server OS. We ran a mixed environment with 10 users, and were using a FM 3 Server. We switched to FM5 (regular, since we had 10 users), and the server responses were much faster than the same setup on FM3, with the same h/w. Of course, all clients were upgraded to FM5 also.

FYI: when we switched from a mac platform FM3 to a mixed platform FM5, we used FM developer to make sure all the scripts and filenames were updated w/ the FM5 extension. However, afterwards, we noticed that everything worked fine w/o the extensions at all, as long as you don't try to autostart FM db files.

 

[CJ]

Thanks for the tip. Was your mixed environment still running off an Apple server?

General: FM just announced Filemaker 5.5 (I think), which is OS X native. Now there's three alternatives for server platform! Good grief...

 

[algin]

Yes and no...

The original server running FMP Server 3 was a 7200 with 128M of RAM, OS8, which we then upgraded to FMP 5 regular.

Then we switched to a PII-300/NT4 Server/128M machine, running FMP 5 regular.

Then, because we had an extra one, we put FMP5 on an original iMac with 128M OS 8.5.

Subjectively, IMHO, the PII felt fastest, but btw the iMac and NT box, most users didn't notice any difference.

Users noticed the biggest difference from FMPServer 3 --> FMP 5. And scripts that autofired felt slower on the 7200 than PII or iMac.

So as far as DB response goes,

7200 w/ FMP3 Server was slowest
7000 w/ FP5
PII/300 and iMac w/ FP5 were fastest.

Pls note that there were no real benchmarks, it was all based on feedback from users who ran the thing for about 4 years.

The client machines all stayed the same, except that they were upgraded from FMP3 (or 4) to FMP5. They were mostly macs w/ 1 NT and 2 win9x machines.

I don't know about OSX...have you had any luck with it? I haven't found anyone I know who has actually run a production copy. Everyone has switched to NT boxes or Unix boxes.

hope this helps!

 

[CJ]

Actually, as part of our "different drummer" thing, we're still going strong on Netware as much as we can! That doesn't seem to be a Filemaker option, however...

Thanks for the info -- sounds really like the hardware isn't as much of an issue as it used to be. Perhaps I need to be examining the backup system, instead.

Thanks all for your help!

 

[Schlogg]

Algin,
Could you let me know your email address? Getting away from this threead, I think.
Am curious about your network.
Mine is sheaven@zip.com.au
Cheers,
Paul J.