Strange crashes and damaged files

[Mark Round]

Hi All,

We have a major problem with Filemaker server here, and I would really appreciate some advice or help! Apologies in advance for the long post, but I want to make sure I've included any information that may be relevant.

Our Filemaker system here is FM Server 5.5, with 5.5 Clients on the desktop. The server is Windows NT/SP6, clients are a mix of 98,NT,2K and XP.

We also have a Filemaker unlimited web solution, running with Apache/Linux and the Java plugin. In total, there are around 107 databases, the largest of which is around 150Mb in size. This is the one we seem to be constantly having problems with.

The system is under reasonable load most of the time - in addition to around 30-50 users at any ony time, there are also automated transfers to/from our e-commerce system that run every 15 minutes and import/export data to CSV files.

The problem is that every so often, the Filemaker server service will just stop. This used to happen once in a blue moon, now, it is more like every week or two. When this happens, all clients recieve a "communication with the host was interrupted" message and get booted out of whatever files they had open. We then have to start the server up, but as it shut down uncleanly, most of the files have to undergo a consistency test - and almost always without fail, the large 150Mb file is damaged. Either it won't open at all and has to be "recovered", or it will loose all it's relationships. In which case, we have to restore a backup, clone and import the records into it.

I can't tell if something is wrong with this file which may be causing the crashes, or if it's merely getting corrupted because it's the largest and most used database. There also seems to be no information available in NT's (poor) logging system - no error messages or anything. Filemaker service just stops dead.

Nonetheless, it's becoming a major problem - outages occuring with this frequency are starting to disrupt the business, as it takes around 1 1/2 hours each time to kick every one out, restart and recover damaged files.

Now, I don't consider this a large setup by any means, and judging by the comments I've read, FileMaker should easily be able to handle this load. Has anyone here encountered a similar situation, or have any pointers ? I notice there was an earlier thread posted by "Don H" which seemed to echo what we are seeing here, but nothing was really resolved apart from the blame for "corrupted" data being shifted to the databases (duplicated fields and the like).

Many thanks in advance,

-Mark

[fishma]

The problem may lie within the large file itself. When you recover a file with the 'Recover' tool, it may say that everything was recovered, but that is not entirely true. Small bits of information are lost on every recovery. Over time small bits accumulate into larger problems and the corruption of the file begins to affect the files reliability.

As for the server, best practice is that all the server does is host FMPro. IF you have other applications running on the FMP server, try to find another home for those applications. You may want to take a weekend and rebuild the server. Reformat the server as a Win2K Server machine and make sure the only application you load is FMP server (Win2K Server appears to be a much more stable server). And you may want to purchase a new server to offload some of the FMPro server load (you'll need a second copy of server).

I would look to the files first. In my experience, corrupted files, or poorly structured files will bring down a server. Any server. Always look to the damaged files as the culprit in a service stoppage. If you don't have a clean copy, you may have to rebuild that file.

Let me know if I can help!

Clark!

[Anatoli]

Use W2k *CLIENT* as FM dedicated server machine.

And Clark is absolutely correct about the rest...

[Mark Round]

Just out of interest, why do you recommend W2K client as opposed to W2K server ?

Thanks for all the info,

-Mark

[Anatoli]

Costs.

Check the FM Server performance thread. There are numbers from such system.

FM server service doesn't need any of W. server stuff.

Just set the priority of background tasks way up.