Mac mini and Filemaker Pro

[xaphonyx]

I work for a small company, and this weekend, i am going to have to setup the network for us. I dont have alot of network experience since im a graphic designer, but small company like i said so i get stuck with it. It is all going to be airport so thats not the problem, im just curious if anyone has used a mac mini as an office server, pretty much all we want to do on it is sharefiles throughout the office and have it host filemaker pro. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreaciated, thanks.
-Tony

 

[WinterMute]

It shouldn't be a problem, we use old G4's for FileMaker servers, they work fine, your only problem might be storage if your database gets big, but a FireWire external disc cures that.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Exactly what we are doing. Mini works fine as a Filemaker Server. Do youself a favor though -- convince management that they need to spend the money for FileMaker Server, NOT simply use a Filemaker Pro client to host the files.

There are many reasons, but not the least of which is that it is a pain in the @$$ to make the Filemaker Pro clinet software do unattended backups. If you do a Retrospect backup (You ARE planning to implement a formal backup procedure on this server, right??) on the open database files, the backup won't work because the files are open. So you need to schedule Filemaker to shut down the databases, make copies of them, then reopen the databases. Then your Retrospect or other backup process backs up the COPIES to another drive or tape. That's a simple one click process in Server but a bunch of scripting in the client software.

 

[xaphonyx]

i have never setup filemaker pro, so ill make sure to mention it, i have only used it at my old work for a few months, but never actually maintained it.