FMS and Retospect conflict?

[Kent Searight]

I've been pulling my hair out for weeks over this one and I'm hoping that someone might offer some insight as to what the problem is.

I'm running FMS 8 on a Mac G4 (DP 1GHz) with OS 10.4 Server. I'm also running Retrospect Workgroup 6.1 for client and server backups. Please note that I an NOT using Retrospect to backup FM files that are being served, as FM Server does that.

A few weeks ago I started getting peculiar and intermittent behavior on the server when Retrospect does its nightly client backups. I get error 519 (network communication failed) when backing up client machines. After the "failure" the server displays some very odd behavior, as follows:

*I cannot connect to it any more from any client machine

*If I open the server's system preferences under Network, it says that an ethernet cable is unlugged

*When I use the FM Server Admin Tool to try to close the hosted files before doing a reboot, I get a message saying that I'm not connected to that server (the one that I'm on and using the SAT on)

Anyway, the rebooting I've done without properly closing the hosted files has caused file corruption and many hours of redevelopment on backup copies. (Of course this has to happen when I'm slammed with work and with deadlines looming)

So here's the part why I ask if Retrospect and FMS can have conflicts. When I realized that file corruption resulted from the above I started closing the hosted files at night before scheduled backups...and Retrospect does its thing with out error. But if I allow the files to keep running, then I'm back to getting the errors and behavior mentioned above.

Other things worth mentioning:

*No one uses the hosted files during scheduled backups

*Files are closed on client machines during scheduled backups

*FMS backup and Retrospect backup are timed to never execute at the same time

*During the "normal" course of the day, I never experience networking problems

Anyone have any ideas? Help is greatly appreciated on this one!

[Ender]

Hey Kent,

Sounds like more evidence of why it's best to keep the host machine dedicated to FileMaker hosting, with no other services running.

It doesn't really answer your question, but my solution is to use a couple of old G4s for retrospect backups.

[Kent Searight]

Point taken!

I thought this configuration would be relatively safe since, in theory, FM services and Retrospect aren't "active" at the same time. The funny thing about this is that I don't have to stop FM services completely to avoid this error, I just have to close all files running under FM services.

Just for laughs , Mike, if you had to take a stab at the problem, where would you start in trying to troubleshoot this? (short of the extra server idea)

Thanks!

[John May - Point In Space]

Are you running the Retrospect application, or just the client, on the FMSA box? If just the client, that should be fine - we back up all our FMSA boxes here with Retrospect. However, I certainly would not recommend running the Retrospect application on the same machine as FMSA.

- John

[Kent Searight]

Are you running the Retrospect application, or just the client, on the FMSA box? If just the client, that should be fine - we back up all our FMSA boxes here with Retrospect. However, I certainly would not recommend running the Retrospect application on the same machine as FMSA.

I'm running the application on the box that's running FMS (not FMSA, but I woudn't think that that would make a difference on this specific topic).

Could you explain why you wouldn't recommend it? I mean does the reason go beyond the usual "run FMS on a machine dedicated just to FMS"? More than 1/2 of my clients use the box running FMS for other services also (myself included : ), and I've just accepted it as a fact of life that I'm going to be dealing with these kinds of environments.

Many thanks for your help!

[John May - Point In Space]

Ack, definitely run FMS on its own box. It's well known that running other applications on an FMS box can cause issues like you're seeing. It's just not worth the $ you'll save in doubling-up processes in exchange for the data corruption you'll end up having to deal with.

In fact, I would recommend this for any serving application, not just FMS.

- John

[Kent Searight]

Just in case anyone ever has a similar problem, I figured out what was causing the problem...a bad network card on my server. I replaced it and all is working well again.