Hi All,

I would appreciate some insights or advice about the following proposal.
I well understand the traditional requirements about dedicated server
setup, but virtual machines in this context are something of a brave new
world.


The requirement is is to install FM 9 Server (or in the short term, FMP
9 sharing over the LAN)

The proposed configuration, is to have a single box, running two
"VMWARE server" virtual machines on debian linux.

One virtual machine will run XP Pro with MS SQL Server 2006 Express
Edition installed and running FileMaker (FMP initially, then FMS9).

The other virtual machine will run Win2003 standard server R2 with user
sessions running in Terminal server.

The FM GUI will run on the Win2003 TS machine connecting to the XPpro
machine over the (virtual) LAN.

This is a LAN only set-up.

There is no File Sharing on the XP pro virtual machine running MSSQL and FM.
There is file sharing on the Win2003 standard server TS virtual machine.
The Win2003 TS VM user MSSQL applications will connect to the SQL Server
running on the XP pro VM via TCP/IP.

The question is will this work, or do we need another virtual machine
running XPpro just for FM?

Are there any issues running FMP on Win2003 Terminal server?


regards

Chris

On Jul 20, 12:29 am, Chris Brown <cbr... [at] medicine.adelaide.edu.au>
wrote:
> Hi All,

> The question is will this work, or do we need another virtual machine
> running XPpro just for FM?

It should work.

> Are there any issues running FMP on Win2003 Terminal server?

Shouldn't be. And FMP is officially supported in Terminal Services.

A separate VM just for FM might be nice in terms of isolation, and the
ability to deal with them separately, it but really shouldn't be
'required'.

However, you don't indicate what kind of usage this system is going to
see, or the number of users, or the class of hardware you are looking
at but. I would be reluctant to recommend this configuration, unless
utilization is known to be light, or you've got a very small number of
users.

Database servers are cpu and hard drive intensive, and piling on a
terminal server strikes me as a pretty bad idea if performance is
important.

In my experience two cheaper servers are both cheaper and faster than
one big one. Don't get me wrong, I like VMware, and use it for server
consolidation and service partitioning too... but I just don't see it
making a lot of sense in this scenario unless your load on both the
database servers and the terminal services is low enough that it will
run comfortably on a single modestly priced server.

Or is there another reason you are trying to cram this into 1 box --
eg. maybe your trying to colocate onto some expensive rackspace and
are trying to keep the monthly costs down??

If you go forward, let us know how it worked out for you. I'd be
interested.