In this movie we will concentrate on the Databases Section of the FileMaker Server
Admin Console. The Database Information Screen has two panes. The top one shows
all of the files and their folder structure and the bottom one gives more
detailed information about the connective clients. Now, you can perform a number
of actions from here, either by selecting it from the Actions Menu or by
selecting any one file or a number of files and right clicking and choosing your
action. You can send a message to anyone that is connected to a file or a group
of files. You can pause or close a file. You can open it if the status is set to
Closed. Uploading a removing a file was added in FileMaker Server 9. Version 10
has the ability to verify a file, to run a consistency check on it. Note however
that FileMaker Server will need to kick off any connective clients to perform
this action. FileMaker Server will close the file, run the check and then reopen
it, as we can see in the log file. As you can see here, the file was closed.
Then the consistency check was run and it was successful and then the file was
opened again. When you remove a file, close it first, then choose Remove and
that action will prompt FileMaker Server to take the file and put it in a folder
named Remove by FMS, which is by itself a sub-folder of the folder named Removed
in FileMaker's Database Folder. Let's verify that. This is the machine that
FileMaker Server is running on and this is where we have FileMaker's Databases
Folder. This is where the files usually are when they are hosted and right here
there's a Remove by FMS folder and a sub-folder named Removed and that's where
we will find the file that we've just removed. That folder structure may seem a
bit odd, but remember that FileMaker Server will automatically try to host every
file that's in the Database Folder and one folder down from there. The Removed
Folder is two folders down from the Database Folder. So that puts it out of
FileMaker's reach to automatically host. Uploading a file is covered in a
separate movie. It's a great method of moving a file to FileMaker Server and
have it open automatically. OS X has the added benefit of making sure that the
privileges are set correctly. Note that you can also send a message to all
clients that are connected to a file, but that applies only to FileMaker Pro
guests. Web clients won't see any message. After you add or remove a file or
make any other change that would affect the list of files or folders here, you
may need to refresh the view before you'll see the changes in the Admin Console.
The folders you see here and the list depend on how you set up FileMaker Server.
Any sub-folders that you've set up in the default FileMaker Server Databases
Location will show up here and also any files and sub-folders in the initial
database location that you can choose in the setup. See the separate movie on
folder locations in this tutorial for more information. Let's have a look at the
Databases Tab in the Configuration Area. We know that FileMaker Server can host
up to 125 files. Out of the box, FileMaker Server is configured to allow 50 files.
You can adjust this up or down as you need and you might ask, why not set it to the
max value of 125 and forget about it? The answer is the same like for setting
the maximum number of users, namely stability and performance. The higher the
setting, the more memory FileMaker Server will grab and the higher you will need
to set the cache. Best practice is to set it slightly higher than the number of
files you really need. Also remember that all the changes you make in this tab
are applied immediately. You don't need to restart FileMaker Server for a change
to take hold. So when you move your files in and then use the Admin Console to
open them up, you can easily adjust the setting without having to kick off any
of the other guests. The most important setting in this Database Tab is the cache.
The cache is that part of your hosted files that FileMaker Server keeps in memory
so it can be accessed faster than having to read from and write to the hard disk.
So higher cache typically means better performance. But that doesn't mean you
should up the cache to whatever maximum it allows. There are two trade-offs;
whatever is in the cache could be lost if FileMaker Server or the machine on it
crashes. That is a risk you can minimize by using a dedicated machine with
quality server hardware and redundancy built in it. But it's still a risk you
need to consider. The second trade-off is in diminishing returns. There is an
optimal point after which adding one megabyte to the cache will not increase
performance anymore and adding more memory might even decrease performance.
Where that optimum point is depends on how your solution is designed, how many
people use it, how people use it and the exact hardware and software deployments.
In the video chapters about monitoring, we'll help you find that particular threshold.
FileMaker Server will tell you what the maximum amount of RAM is that you can use
for the cache. It's in direct relation to the physical amount of RAM that's
installed, but it has a hard maximum as the pane describes, no matter how many
gigs of RAM you install in the machine. And it goes somewhat like this. You have
the physical RAM that is installed in your machine. FileMaker Server reserves
128 megabytes for any other process, for the operating system, for anything else
on the machine. Of whatever is remaining of the physical RAM, FileMaker divides
that by four and that is the maximum that FileMaker Server will be able to use
on your machine and it has a minimum of 64 megabytes and a fixed maximum of 800
megabytes.
FileMaker Server 10
Wim Decorte
US$ 99.95
6.5 hours - 97 Movies
Win Vista XP 2000,ME. Mac OS X
Ground / 2 day / Next Day
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