Strange issues configuring Server 9 with PHP API

[angelleye]

I know the final answer to all of this has probably got to be something with our firewall/router configuration, however, I'd still appreciate any feedback on this becuase I'm lost at why this is actually working for me right now.

Here's the scenario. Our FM server is hosted on-site. We have a web server hosted off-site. As such, I'm trying to configure the FM server as a two-machine configuration: FM and WPE on 1 machine and the web server on the second machine.

I go through the deployment wizard and successfully setup our domain.com as the web server, and then it does its thing and configures the rest. When it's done I get 3 green lights and everything says it's working correctly.

Then I go in and try to do a simple PHP API call, listDatabases() to see if it works. I get an error that a connection to the host could not be made. This is where I think, well, that must be a firewall/router issue.

Here's the thing, though. If I install a web server on the actual FM server and go ahead and configure it as a Single Machine setup instead of a two-machine setup, then it DOES work from my 3rd party web server.

So again, I'm pretty sure there must be some firewall/router issue causing my connection issues when I actually configure it using my separate web server machine. Why does it work, though, when I configure is a single machine? When it's like this I seem to be able to hit it from any web server.

As for the firewall/router, I gave the little PDF chart for how to set all of that up to our Cisco engineer and he swears it's all configured that way. Again, though, I can't connect to the WPE (PHP API) when FM is configured with a separate web server but I can when it's configured as a single machine...and I can do it from multiple web servers.

Doesn't that seem odd..??

Edited October 28, 2008 by Guest

[mr_vodka]

Just a guess here but did you check the software firewalls as well.

[angelleye]

Yeah, actually the only software firewalls would be the Windows firewall and those are disabled.

I did start running some tests trying to telnet from my filemaker server to the web server over the ports that the little chart shows need opened and I'm getting failures. I'm thinking he simply didn't get it opened up correctly on the router.

Still, though, it seems odd that a work-around for that is to just install a web server on FM even if you're not really using it and configure it as a single machine...doesn't it?

[Genx]

I'd probably trust the cisco engineer...

Do the one machine deployment - you need a local "worker" webserver to actually handle the requests coming in from your other webserver.

At the end of the day, when you make your "listDatabases()" request you are making it to the "worker" which will then in turn query FileMaker, process the response, and send it back to the querying webserver.

Now, if this "worker" is in the same network then you don't really need to worry about ports - the only port you will need to get through to "FileMaker CWP" externally is 80. If on the other hand your worker machine is external, then you will need to open a hell of a lot of ports to get it to work properly...

[Genx]

Here, have a dedicated blog post :

http://www.filemakerdesign.com/blog/?bid=15

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Drew:

Are you trying to run Server 9 on Vista? if so, that is not supported.

Steven