FMS Crashing at Multiple Sites

[Safari Steve]

Hi All,

This is my first post to FM Forums.

My company deploys a FileMaker solution to multiple (many) sites nationwide; "SafariGuide". SafariGuide consists of 80 files which are all served from FMS 8.04. Many clients are served from Windows and many from Mac. All clients are running 8.5. A common problem is occurring ... the FMS software will simply stop ... the node is running just fine ... the server software justs stops. At first I thought this was due to running plugins which were not 8 certified. They were removed (across multiple sites) and the problem continues. It has no pattern ... will run fine for 1 day or 2 weeks, then BAM! it dies.

Has anyone of you experienced this? Want to give an old FileMaker guy some of your wisdom? :

Steve Shiver

President

SafariGuide Software, Inc.

[Ender]

Greetings Steve,

I think we'd have to consider each server install separately. Maybe there's a common thread in the configurations, but first try to take them one by one. For a particular server, it would help if you can provide some specifics about the server OS, the typical number of clients connected when it fails, the LAN connection speed, the WAN connection speed, the server cache settings, the hard drive speed and type, and if the failures happen at peak times, random times, or during backups. Also, what does the event.log file say about it?

Hopefully we'll see something that sticks out as a possible cause.

EDIT:

Also, with so many files, this sounds like a solution converted from FM6 or earlier. Have the files been compressed post-conversion (via Save a Copy As)?

How long have the problems been happening, what's new since that point?

Edited May 12, 2007 by Guest

[Steven H. Blackwell]

I'd agree that the multiple site nature of these crashes points to issues with the files themselves. Also, though less likely so, there may be issues if users are not running FMServer in the recommended Best practices fashion.

More information needed here to more fully disgnose this problem.

Steven

[msorich]

Hi Steve,

What is your server environment like? Are you running FMS 8 on a Windows server?

If you are, are you using WinAD authentication (i.e, external server accounts) in your FMP databases?

Martin

[Julian.]

Maybe this can help: http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/187144/

[aholtzapfel]

Check the back-up's on those servers. Make sure open fmfiles are not being backed up, virus scans, anything else that may try to access them. If they are, it cuase this problem, and more. (I've had this problem multiple times, Network Admin uses "best practice", but it cuases problems.)