Advice please.. Terrified of corruption..

[kiwi_chris]

Hi all..

First I'd like to ask someone to tell me how I could have been using Filemaker for five years and not known about these forums?? I've learned more trolling the forums for the past month than I have in years!!

Anyway, on to my question... As I mentioned I've been using Filemaker since just after 7 was released. Now using 8.5 Adv. Several years ago I had a scare where after connecting an external hard drive that wouldn't play nice, I had several kernel panics while developing on FM7. The result was corruption in my file that I hadn't even finished working on - when I created a new record it wouldn't move to the new record, instead it would stay put on the same record you were on. Anyway, the revelation of how insidious corruption can be just blew me away. My issue is that I'm about to start building a large and mission critical system for an organisation and I'm becoming concerned that they will end up with their data all corrupted.

Short of a server crash is there anything I should be wary of? I will keep hourly backups while developing in case my machine falls over, but I can't see that really. What I'm concerned about is once it's deployed - is Filemaker really going to be solid enough to keep their data safe? Should I organise the FM server to back up regularly and just tell them to make sure it's got a good UPS and call me if the server ever crashes so I can swap out the last backup? They're severely non-technical so I can't expect them to do this. Heck, I want to be releasing this software to strangers later on and I don't want to be fixing stuff like this myself !

Any thoughts appreciated..

[Genx]

First I'd like to ask someone to tell me how I could have been using Filemaker for five years and not known about these forums??

Lol, you probably never googled FileMaker Forums.

Short of a server crash is there anything I should be wary of?

Client crashes are a little annoying, but not normally critical provided you're not changing schema

is Filemaker really going to be solid enough to keep their data safe?

... really depends on how good your backup systems are: schema, data, documentation on backups + restoring them.

All up, provided you put adequate system's in place and provide your UPS's have shutdown script capabilities you shouldn't have too many issues.

There's plenty of whitepapers, blogs etc. on this that I'm sure others will be able to point you to.

[mr_vodka]

I would suggest Hardware RAID, backups, good hard drives (SAS), UPS, reliable network card and network. FileMaker Server is very sensitive to the network.

I would also recommend getting FMPA 10; at least one copy. The new recovery option features are well worth the upgrade. It makes a much better way to export the data out and import into a clean clone if need be.

[kiwi_chris]

Lol, you probably never googled FileMaker Forums.

Yep, that would be it! Feel like slapping me upside the head ? -)

Client crashes are a little annoying, but not normally critical provided you're not changing schema

Cool. I don't intend to be working on it live, so hopefully we can rule that out...

... really depends on how good your backup systems are: schema, data, documentation on backups + restoring them.

I don't know if docs about backup + restore will help this lot, as I mentioned they are extremely non-technical. They're there to fly aeroplanes not muck around with computers... But for a wider release I see your point about documenting this stuff...

All up, provided you put adequate system's in place and provide your UPS's have shutdown script capabilities you shouldn't have too many issues.

Hmmm, me know nothing about servers talking to ups'. Time to do some reading. Thanks...

There's plenty of whitepapers, blogs etc. on this that I'm sure others will be able to point you to.

Yep, I have found lots of threads on corruption here, which is why I posted.. If you mean about the server setup, I'll do some more reading.

Thanks for your help...

Edited February 18, 2009 by Guest

[kiwi_chris]

I would suggest Hardware RAID, backups, good hard drives (SAS), UPS, reliable network card and network. FileMaker Server is very sensitive to the network.

I would also recommend getting FMPA 10; at least one copy. The new recovery option features are well worth the upgrade. It makes a much better way to export the data out and import into a clean clone if need be.

Thanks for that - basically a stable network and server with a good RAID setup and good UPS should do the trick?

Regarding FMPA 10 - I am only on 8.5 temporarily - the site in question is a new installation and of course we'll be installing 10 there. I will be on FMPA10 in the next month or so I think, very keen to get upgraded.

FMP 9 came out about a week after I upgraded to 8.5 from 8. I felt that ripped off with 8.5 once I realised what I'd got for my money I didn't feel like parting with even more for a while and I've just never gotten around to buying 9, considering I have at least 2 licenses of each version from 7. Coincidentally I happened upon Filemaker's website after several years of not looking at it, about an hour after 10 was released - took one look at the new features and almost wet myself with excitement!!

Edited February 18, 2009 by Guest