FileMaker and Windows Terminal Services

[transpower]

I've used Windows Terminal Services for other applications and would now like to use it for FileMaker. I've read the FileMaker white paper entitled "Running FileMaker Pro 6 on Windows 2000 Terminal Services." It doesn't look too promising: FileMaker Server cannot (or at least should not) be installed on the same computer as Windows Server/Terminal Server. And p. 6 of the white paper says "Terminal Services clients can access FileMaker Pro files designated as Single User files....Multi-User files...are not supported on Terminal Services Clients." Doesn't that make Terminal Services useless for FileMaker? Obviously I'd like to be able to host multi-user FileMaker files on the Terminal Server, with all the Terminal Services clients being able to access them simultaneously. Anyway, somebody with experience in this area please respond. Thanks.

[Ted S]

Hi Transpower,

I'm only vaugely familiar with the Whitepaper that you speak of so I can't comment its take on Terminal Services however I do have a lot of experience with FileMaker Pro on Terminal Services and I have been very impressed.

Some background: In our home office each user has a copy of FMP 6.0 loaded onto their local PC. I should mention that we are 100% Windows and are running a mixture of XP, W2K, and NT4.0 on the user's PCs. We are also running FM Server on a dedicated box that hosts the database(s) for everybody.

We have a high-power server-grade box that hosts many of our applications and FileMaker Pro (standard edition) is one of them. We installed Microsoft's Terminal Services on this machine which allows users from throughout the world connect to it to use FileMaker Pro. As of today about 250 user accounts have been established on this server although no where near that amount of people are connected concurrently. I would guess that we usually have somewhere between 30 and 50 concurrent connections during normal business hours. We have offices in Taiwan, Korea, UK, and many throughout the US that all use Terminal Services to access FileMaker.

We haven't had any problems with it at all. In fact, we successfully ran FMP 3.0 on Terminal Services for a few years until we upgraded recently.

I would estimate the speed of the application at about 90% - 95% of what it would be running locally.

We have also installed Terminal Services on all of our 25 to 30 other non-FileMaker servers. We run these in the Terminal Services Admin mode which only allows 2 or 3 concurrent connections by users with admin privlidges. This is a wonderful tool when you are supporting offices around the world. I am able to fix problems on a server in Korea for instance without leaving the comfort of my home.

[transpower]

Ted:

So, to be clear, the 30 to 50 concurrent connections on the Terminal Server are accessing the same multi-user database file on the dedicated box with FileMaker Server? I like to use a Windows terminal (like the Televideo TeleClient) at each station and simply connect the user to Terminal Server; this has worked for other applications without having to set up a separate server. I don't want to have to install FMP at each station--hence the Windows terminal rather than a PC.

[Ted S]

Transpower,

I'm not familiar with Televideo or TeleClient so I can't weigh in with any authority on that but restated here's what we've got:

Server 1: Is a fairly lightweight box with running FileMaker Server version 5.? and all of the files (about 60) are shared as multi-user. There is no FileMaker client version loaded on this server nor is there any other application running.

Server 2: Is a beefy box running standard FileMaker Pro and Windows Terminal Services.

We install regular FileMaker on all local PCs which is moot for this conversation but I include it here just to illustrate our usage. Our remote offices and travelers get to the data that is housed on Server 1 via Server 2 using Terminal Services. These folks do not have any FileMaker product loaded on their local boxes.

This setup has proven to be very stable for us. The only problem that we encounter is when a client PC has two or more NICs. I've made other posts here about that but it is not Terminal Services related anyway.

[transpower]

Ted:

OK, so the PC's do NOT have to have a copy of FMP (which would definitely be the case with the Televideo TeleClient). Now, either the Terminal Server or the FileMaker Server must have some sort of volume licensing. Do you have just one copy of FMP on the Terminal Server--or a volume license? Or does the volume license go on the FileMaker Server?

[Ted S]

Just to be clear, I am not a FileMaker licensing guru nor do I play one on TV.

We do indeed have a volume license for 200+ users and which covers us worldwide I'm told. Maybe someone else could ring-in on how the licensing would work on a one-by-one basis with Terminal Services.

Oh yeah, I believe that with our level of licensing we can run many different combinations of FileMaker applications however we are only running FM Server (1 copy) and 1 copy of FMP on the TS box.

[transpower]

I did hear back from FileMaker, Inc. about this issue. The volume licenses go on the FileMaker Server computer. One copy of FileMaker Pro goes on the Terminal Server.