markmaytum

Does anybody *have* a good script/bat file that can gracefully stop databases? I've been struggling to make this work correctly since setting up our v9 server. This is very important for a variety of reasons - clean backup and power outtage/battery shutdown, VM server shutdown script are a few that come to mind. It seems like the fmsadmin steps are pretty straightforward. What we need is a way to pause for 120 secs. between fmsadmin close and stopping the service. Any help or advice greatly appreciated. -mark

Maybe I'm being dense, but as far as I know, the maximum ram cache on FMS is 40mb. I'd *like* to set it higher, if someone knows a workaround. The server has 1g in it. But at this point, it's largely a waste as FMS isn't committing enough of it. I want more server data in memory. Whether it's cached by FMS or on a RAM disk doesn't matter to me (so far :-)). I've never seen processor power on a FMS become a bottleneck - and it's not on ours. As for total throughput of a FM system, the bottleneck is almost always processing power of the client. I've only recently run into the problem of the FMS's disk array becoming a bottleneck under high client load. I could split the one server into two but it seems prudent to try the RAM disk route first. BTW, disk queues are reported by perfmon as instantaneous for a given sample period, they're not cumulative. That's what I meant by instantaneous. High disk queues/sec point to a bottleneck in the disk subsystem.

Hmm. We might be talking two different things here. Rambunctious is a Mac only product (as far as I can see from their website). I'm looking for some recommended ramdisk software for W2K server. Anatoli, Can't imagine why your IT guy didn't want to upgrade from NT to W2K. I'm sure he had good reasons that I know nothing about. Anyhoo, disk queues are instantaneous. They're a measure of requests to access the disk that have to wait because another is in process. At some busy points during the day DQ's are several hundred/sec. Since this is a very fast array, controller and driver. The next logical step seems to be a ramdisk. FYI, the server cache is 40mb, files hosted are 52 (around 700mb) and max users are 100 with roughly 70-80 connected at any one time. I do graph the FMS cache hits and it seems like the line is rarely pegged at 100% anymore.

Used to run FMS on a G4 1g with a L3 array. Moved it to a W2K server - still with 1g of RAM. I remember trying to serve some of our more heavily bashed databases of off a RAM disk on the G4. First of all, I could only make a 256mb ramdisk on the mac. Second of all, it turned a rock solid server into a er,....less than rock solid server. Third of all, the performance increases were minimal. Now on the new W2K server, I can see avg disk queues often so the array often isn't keeping up the requests. I was thinking of trying the RAM disk thing again. Anyone have any experience with this on W2K FMS? Any advice or comments appreciated! TIA, Mark Maytum Pompanoosuc Mills Corporation

Used to run FMS on a G4 1g with a L3 array. Moved it to a W2K server - still with 1g of RAM. I remember trying to serve some of our more heavily bashed databases of off a RAM disk on the G4. First of all, I could only make a 256mb ramdisk on the mac. Second of all, it turned a rock solid server into a er,....less than rock solid server. Third of all, the performance increases were minimal. Now on the new W2K server, I can see avg disk queues often so the array often isn't keeping up the requests. I was thinking of trying the RAM disk thing again. Anyone have any experience with this on W2K FMS? Any advice or comments appreciated! TIA, Mark Maytum Pompanoosuc Mills Corporation

We're currently testing MetaFrame 1.8 to serve 10-15 clients too. It's pretty sweet. The only thing we've had a problem with so far: Terminal services and Citrix do not know how to map a USB connected printer back to the client. If you have any USB connected printers on either PCs or Macs, you'll need to look at some other solution. We're testing Axis print servers with our Epson 740 inkjets. It basically puts them on the network. You can then set up individual printers on the W2K server - you don't need printer mapping in Citrix/TS. You should also check out JWT HOBlink. It's a Java based mac client for Terminal Server. 20 CAL's of HOBlink are about $2700 vs. $5000 for 15 CAL's of Citrix. HTH, Mark

We currently have a mac FMP5 client that acts as a "script server". It runs scripts at scheduled time like: recalculating the today function, doing relookups for 10K's of records. We use MacAT for the scheduling - everything runs ducky. We're going to move this function to a mostly idle WinNT server so we can use the mac for something useful -). I figured I could just call a filemaker script from the command line and then toss it into the AT command scheduler. But I can't find *any* documentation on driving FM from the command line. Sure there must be some functionality like x:yourpathherefilemakerpro.exe -q (quit), -s /scriptname (run this script)? Or am I going to have to mess with a Troi plugin? On a related note. Has anyone ever tried making FileMaker into a service with srvany.exe? I can see this being helpful here but also for a Lasso RAIC. You could put FM unlimited on a bunch of regular client workstations as a service and have lasso (FM Remote) bash them without the users even knowing (or having to log in for that matter). Again, trying to save a buck or two by not having to add computers to the RAIC. Mark Maytum Pompanoosuc Mills Corporation