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FileMaker Server - Can I use a Mac Mini as a server?
I get this question about once every three months and I'd like to offer my advice and recommendations. The short answer is "maybe". Here's the longer answer.
The hardware and software requirements are posted on the FMI website and are updated whenever FMI introduces a new version of FileMaker Server, or Server Advanced.
These requirements differ depending on what server OS you are running and also include recommended hardware, and minimum hardware requirements. Note that there's not a whole lot of information regarding the kind of performance you can expect with any of these configurations. That's because there are so many variables that can affect performance, and real performance metrics are not easy reading. It's also incredibly time consuming to gather performance metrics on a variety of hardware platforms, OS configurations, and with different performance tuning settings (e.g. cache size, cache flush interval, max connections, etc.).
So how can we make a hardware recommendation to a customer that's believable, realistic, and applies in all cases? The answer is that we can't. I'm not prepared to say that a Mac Mini will fit the bill in all cases. Does the Mini measure up in terms of the minimum requirements for an FMS deployment with OS X v10.5? Absolutely. The new Mini's have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 160GB hard drive and 2GB of memory - this satisfies both the minimum and the recommended requirements for FMS 10. Will a Mini work for a customer that's deploying PORTAL to a team of 4 users? Probably. Will it perform as well as the new 8 core Xserve? Absolutely not - but we're talking about comparing a $600 machine to a potentially $4000-5000 machine (that's almost a 10x difference in price). But that's the crux of the original question, isn't it? How much money do I need to spend to get acceptable performance? How much money do I need to spend on my server platform to get good performance? How much am I going to need to spend to get awesome performance? These are the real questions that are being asked here, and if you ask one of these questions, the answer becomes easier to find.
So let's start over...
Scenario One: PORTAL Only School, 3-6 users in the office, no other FileMaker files hosted. Mac Mini is fine in this scenario.
Scenario Two: Everything Everywhere School (KEYSTONE, PORTAL, GENERATIONS, ADVOCATE, Web Services). Mac Mini is not fine for this scenario. This organization needs server class hardware with a fast data drive (preferably RAID) and plenty of RAM.
Scenario Three: PORTAL/KEYSTONE School with TAM users. The Mac Mini might be appropriate here, but the IT department and other stakeholders need to be aware of performance issues. As the number of users increases, the load on the server hardware goes up. With TAM, you introduce the possibility that many teachers will be hitting that hardware simultaneously, either during grade and comment entry, or more likely, during attendance data entry. If a school is going to use TAM to do attendance, I'd say that a Mini is inadequate and the IT staff needs to start assessing their options for more robust and speedier hardware.
Conclusion
Remember, a Mini is essentially a laptop in a square case. Ask the IT staff if they would trust their own operation (help desk for example) to an unused laptop. Ask the stakeholders (e.g. Division Heads) if they'd like to put all of their teachers grades and comments data on a laptop and trust that that machine is going to be stable and reliable during the grades and comments period. Server class machines are more expensive for a reason, their hard drives are faster and have longer lives. Server hardware generally has better heat dissipation properties, and faster CPU's (that need better heat dissipation). Servers can utilize more memory. You can set up a RAID array with server class hardware (though the new Mini Server for $999 gives the option of a second internal drive). It's not a hard argument to make, especially when a school might be spending $50k on iR services, and $4k on FileMaker Software - another $3k for some decent hardware is a small percentage of the total budget. Also, if they truly are committed to putting all of their important data in their iR/FileMaker systems, do they want to entrust that data to a laptop quality machine?
- Charlie