FMU 5.5 taking all system resources

[techfranco]

Ok...here is my problem...hoping someone somewhere can give me a push in the right direction.

I recently setup a new machine to act as a server for our databases.

I went from a P2-450, 128MB of RAM, Windows2000 Advanced Server to a P3-933, 384MB of RAM, Windows2000 Advanced Server. I duplicated all settings for Windows and Filemaker on the new machine, but I'm running into a big problem. As for network config, the machines have one network card that is behind a proxy server for internal access and then another network card provides direct external access via T1.

We access the database files directly across our network for "internal" access and have the Web Publishing feature setup to share our databases to the outside world. Traffic internally is roughly 10 people at any given time. External traffic is worldwide and can be 10-20 people maximum at one time. Databases being served at one time is roughly 8.

If the machine is left inactive for 2-4 hours FMU will start taking ALL of the CPU cycles which slows down the machine and any access to it. The only way to make the machine free up resources is to reboot it. When FMU is taking all of the resources, even opening something as simple as IE or My Computer takes 30 seconds from input to the selected item opening on-screen.

Any ideas???

[Anatoli]

Could you try FPU 5?

Our FMP 5 is running from May 25 without reboot on NT4 server with IIS.

1 NIC card.

FM products don

[Kurt Knippel]

Why the switch to the new machine?

Seems to me that you may also have an issue with a way to powerful a machine for FMU. Win2k Advanced Server is NOT needed (heck win98 will work), 933Mhz and 384 RAM is way more than FMU needs.

What you really need is a fast pipe to the Filemaker Server, like a 1GB Ethernet connection.

What else is running on this machine? Strip out all things that are not needed for running FMU.

[techfranco]

Ok...maybe a little bit more detail of my needs is in order...maybe it will help.

I work for a software developer. We used a fairly simple Filemaker template for our bug databases.

The problem I ran into using the basic version FMP was the limit on 10 unique IP adresses over a 12 hour period. That was the whole reason for upgrading to FMU.

Captkurt-You really think that the resource problems when Filemaker is left running but idle stem from having a machine too powerful for FMU?

I would say that maybe I have FMU configured incorrectly, but the same settings where used on the P2-450 as I've tried on the P3-933.

I would also buy the problems with having 2 network cards but again I never had any problems with 2 network cards in the old machine. As well, I've seen no documentation of this multiple network cards thing - from Filemaker or other web sites.

Again...any assistance or guideance provided would be most appreciated.

[techfranco]

Wow...

I bit the bullet and called Filemaker Support on this one as I just don't have the time to keep rebooting my server.

Captkurt - I do beleive I owe you an apology...your notes were indeed correct according to Filemaker.

I couldn't beleive it when the rep told me the same thing you indicated - my P3-933 is far too powerful for FMU. I didn't know whether to bust out laughing or cry a river of tears...but that is honestly what Filemaker said.

[Kurt Knippel]

I do see this every now and again, where people simply give Filemaker way to powerful a machine and have problems. Put it on low power workstation class machine and the problems go away.

I know that it seems odd, but Filemaker is just one of those apps that does not need much. That said you cannot put a fast enough drive into the machine. If you can get a 15,000RPM drive use it. This is the only case where more powerful is better.

We use Macintosh Cubes for our Filemaker Servers. The Cube was a mid-range machine 2 years ago. The only mods we made were adding enough RAM to run Filemaker and the databases in a RAM disk. Other than that these are $800 servers. (no I did not leave out a zero, that is eight hundred dollars).

Our backup tape drive costs more than all 7 of our servers put together.

[Anatoli]

To run FMU on Advanced Server is probably overkill.

But the statement about machine is to fast for FMU -- hmm.

In one installation we have FMU5 on W2k, P4 2.8GHz, 533MHz FSB and 15,000-RPM SCSI HD.

Without any problems.

I guess it will do 20-30 Web Transactions /sec.

[techfranco]

I'm in the entertainment sofware industry...so to me there cannot be anything such as "too much power". Filemaker seems to go against everything I've learned in four and a half years as a QA/IT specialist.

Refusing to beleive that my entire computer system is "too powerful", my first step so far has been to pull out the 256MB stick of RAM from the machine.

So far, after 16 hours of operation at 128MB of RAM, I haven't had any problems.

[Anatoli]

Maybe just corrupted memory on that chip. I have it once on dual boot machine.

In NT4 everything was fine, on Me absolute disaster.

After removing one of the 128MB chip everything was OK. So not the whole chip was bad, only small portion. NT4 didn't use that but Me yes and that was the problem.

[kenneth2k1]

Good point, Anatoli

A memory leak would certainly cause what he described.

Ken

[Anatoli]

It is my guess also

[techfranco]

So much for the memory theory...the stupid thing locked up overnight again with Filemaker taking all the CPU cycles.

[Kurt Knippel]

Personally, I'd go back to a less powerful system. Here is a little anecdote: Back in the day, when I used to diagnose DOS and other such systems, a classic thing used to happen; older programs that used to run find in DOS 3.x on a 286 machine, just would not run properly on DOS 5.x on a 486 machine. The bottom line was the machine just ran to fast for the older code to deal with and it would either crash or lockup.

I am not saying that this is the case, or that FMU is an inferior product, but apps are generally built around certain OSs and generations of machines and running them on faster, more powerful machines can cause problems, as silly as that sounds.

You should check and make sure that you have both a clean OS install, with as few options as possible, in addition to a clean FMU install.

While it may be tempting to run things like virus checkers and other TSR, avoid them. There should really be no icons on your task bar other than the default OS ones and FMU.

[techfranco]

I ended up setting an old machine up with one network card with external access only to serve as my Filemaker server. We access it through the "hosts" button in the open file dialog.

So far...I'm sitting at 180 hours of the system being online. Total processor time taken by FMU is only about 7 minutes.

So far so good...

[Anatoli]

OK, we have 10:43:45 for FMU and 3812:39:22 for the idle processes.

It is running just fine

[mlindal]

We are having this happen on our machines here again. We thought we had it solved and switched from Mac OSX to Windows 2K for the FMU. Same thing - FMU takes 100% of system resources.

Filemaker tech support says "you need to reboot filemaker daily" in order to run efficiently. I find this a joke - they can't be serious can they?

Unless there is something in the code that is causing a run away process to steal resources...

[Anatoli]

Version 5 is running just fine month after month...