Alternative to Host / Open Remote

[Slater]

Hi Everyone,

Looking for a bit of advice - I'm using FMP16 on two computers here at my place. I host the DB and then a person who comes in to work for me uses Open Remote to access the DB on the computer that she's working on (my second computer, both Macs).

I've had no end of problems with this - the DB is very slow on her computer. I've worked around that a number of ways, but each one falls down sooner or later. Anyway - the issue is that she needs to be in here this week, while I'm not able to be here. The last time this happened, the DB ground to a complete halt, everything was so incredibly slow, that I paid her for a half day of doing nothing, essentially. (She couldn't get into my computer to restart and then host the DB on FMP.)

In terms of what I could do while she's here and I'm not, * I could just put a copy of the DB on her computer, but then she'd be able to copy it, say to a USB. I don't think she would, but as it has very important personal info on it, I'd like that not to be a possibility. Also, her user is locked out of those parts of the DB, but none the less, that's something that I'd like to not be possible. * If it were windows, I believe it's possible to set a folder so that it can't be copied. And so I'm out of ideas!

Is there any advice anyone can give me on 1. allowing her to access the DB, while 2. her not being in a position to copy the DB, and 3. me not hosting the files on my computer?

Many thanks for any help!

Cheers

[Josh Ormond]

One of the first things you learn when hosting a file, don't host it on a machine being used as a workstation. FileMaker is doing a lot. So any tasks you are performing on your machine, take resources away from FileMaker being able to serve data.

Here are some other tips: https://support.filemaker.com/s/article/Optimizing-network-performance-for-shared-databases-1503692929962?language=en_US

[Wim Decorte]

In essence what you need is to host this file on FileMaker Server so that you can protect it, while keeping it always available plus the native capability of solid backups at regular intervals.

Obviously you do not want to install FMS on your own machine, for best results, use a dedicated machine.  If you don't want to buy more hardware then rent it and use cloud hosting.

If her experience is already slow when you're both in the same location then that may be due to some bad design choices in this solution and putting the file in the cloud is only going to make those worse.  You would have to walk us through a couple of examples of the performance issues before we can help with that.

[Slater]

Hi Guys, thanks so much for getting back to me and apologies for my delay.

So, the problem is not so much that it runs slowly on her machine, but that after a time it kinda grinds to a halt. That could be after as little as 5 mins, or as long as an hour or two. But before that happens, it's all going along nicely enough. And that delay in it slowing down to a halt, leads me to think that the load on the host machine (my Mac) isn't the culprit, because the system can be scooting along nicely for a couple of hours.

Typically, if she's going from one record to another in a found set, then her computer can hang for even a couple of minutes, while most of the time to do so would normally take a second. One strange thing that is visible when this happens is that there are a succession of pop up dialog boxes, but off the top of my head I can't remember what they say. I'll take some screen grabs next time (though I'll not be at my desk computer for the rest of the week, but I'll post a grab once it happens again).

Undoubtably, the DB could have been written better - it's grown over many years and has quite a few oddities in its methods, but I don't think that that is the culprit because otherwise it should be a constant problem.

When the slow down occurs, sometimes just restarting her FM can solve the problem, though sometimes it takes me to restart my FM, but even sometimes we both need to restart the computers.

Is FM Server a separate app? As a solution, I could perhaps host the DB when she's with me using FMP, and then if I'm away I could host the DB with FM Server? If FMS didn't solve the problem, would that point to a network issue?

Both of my Macs are up to date and attached to a switch (un-managed) and then the switch is attached to an Netgear Orbi router. The router is new as I thought that my old Apple airports could be to blame, so I changed them out for the Netgear system. Though I am running FMP16, which could be the problem. As I need to buy the app for 3 seats, as a sole trader the cost is very high, and so I'd like to wait for the release of FMP19 to upgrade my FM copies.

Thanks for any of your thoughts!

[Wim Decorte]

15 hours ago, Slater said:

leads me to think that the load on the host machine (my Mac) isn't the culprit, because the system can be scooting along nicely for a couple of hours.

That doesn't rule out the load on your machine, because the hosting of the file (your machine acts as a server) is going to be very much affected by whatever else your machine is doing, including follow-up activity that the OS does based on what you were doing previously, like indexing for Spotlight, or AV/anit-malware scanning, or rearranging the hard disk.  A lot of that activity goes away when you use a dedicated host because then the machine only has one task.

 

15 hours ago, Slater said:

Is FM Server a separate app? As a solution, I could perhaps host the DB when she's with me using FMP, and then if I'm away I could host the DB with FM Server? If FMS didn't solve the problem, would that point to a network issue?

Yes it is.  And no, it does not make sense to switch between using FMS and not using FMS.  Once you get FMS you leave the files there at all times and you both connect to it as a guest.

 

15 hours ago, Slater said:

As I need to buy the app for 3 seats, as a sole trader the cost is very high, and so I'd like to wait for the release of FMP19 to upgrade my FM copies.

 

The entry level licensing is 5 seats and you get the server included; it's around $900.  Whether that is very high for you or not is a value proposition that we have no insight into.

Not sure why you'd want to wait for 19, the pricing won' t change.  If you get the licensing now you'll automatically get 19 when it comes out.

 

This is extremely relevant:

15 hours ago, Slater said:

One strange thing that is visible when this happens is that there are a succession of pop up dialog boxes, but off the top of my head I can't remember what they say.

Do take some screenshots of that.  If your solution is old, then a lot of this can be because of the Classic theme and unfortunate design choices that make FM calculate the same thing over and over.

[Josh Ormond]

Well, your experience kind of confirms that the problem is on your machine. It’s is likely one of the 4 main bottlenecks. Processor, Memory, Disk I/O, Network. Any of which could be taking a hit from FileMaker processing a request, or some other process on your machine using up the resources. The consumer OS isn’t optimized for shared resources. 
 

One thing to check is plugins. Or other applications that may have a memory leak. 
 

Disk space? How much free space do you have? How large are the database files?

What kind of processor do you have?

Some of these questions are easier to track and monitor with FileMaker Server. 

2 minutes ago, Wim Decorte said:

The entry level licensing is 5 seats and you get the server included; it's around $900.

Just to add a note to this, this is the user licensing. It is an annual cost. You don’t get server if you just buy individual copies of FileMaker Pro.