Sharing with a NAS drive

[Dave Hall]

Hi,

We have a small office network of four computers sharing a NAS drive. The NAS drive is always on and is effectively our server. The other computers are used by the company's employees and are not always in use.

We all want to have access to a shared Filemaker (Pro 9) database.

When I open the database, I get a warning that this is a shared database, but that performance will be inhibited by the fact that I'm not running it on the computer I'm accessing it from.

It is possible for other users to share the database, but it's all a bit clumsy, with people having to open remotely from whichever user first logged in, and this causes problems for Mac/PC compatibility, leaving some people read-only, and the problems of speed and stability warned by Filemaker.

With a normal network, I understand that you would have the database running permanently on the server, with everyone else opening the file remotely.

As our server is a NAS drive however, is this going to be possible? How would we do it?

Is there any other solution? Moving the database to one of our computers isn't desirable because, as I've said, they're not always all on. Only the NAS drive is, and ideally I would like it to hold the Filemaker database and fulfil the functions of a server.

Hope somebody can help. Thanks.

[Ocean West]

Welcome David,

NO don't do it that way its the fastest way to corrupt your databases.

If you must use peer-to-peer put the files on ONE computer in a folder that is NOT SHARED

you must launch the databases on that one machine (effectively being the host) then others can open FileMaker and use OPEN REMOTE to see the the databases to launch.

SD

[Fitch]

Don't do it. FileMaker files should never be shared using OS file sharing. You data is likely to get corrupted if you do.

What is your data worth to you? Not worth the cost of FM Server and a PC that meets the minimum specs?

At the very least you should keep the files on one machine, and use that machine to host the files for others to access. Use FileMaker sharing, NOT Windows sharing.

Much better would be to invest in FM Server. The automated backups alone are worth it. You should never be attempting to back up live database files, by the way.

You could alternatively look into a FileMaker hosting service such as one of those that advertise below.