i am going to move my dbs to a Raid and Host the dbs from the raid through my FM Server.

1. Is this advisible?

2. The raid is backed up seperately to the FM Server and i was wondering if when this backup occurs it will cause any corruption to the hosted databases as they will still be being hosted?

PS.The FM server mounts the Raid volume through a netork!

Gracias,

Ricardo.

First. It is not a good idea to serve files via a mounted server volume. It may not even be possible. The performance would suffer horribly. Store the served files locally on the FileMaker Server machine.

Second. Set your backup to copy the files into the raid which will subsequently be backed-up like you say.

Hope this helps,

G

Ricardo:

DO NOT do this.

See the FileMAker Server Best practices White paper at:

http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/fms_best_practices.pdf

Old Advance Man

Thanks for your replies............

What are the problems with residing my databases on a raid system. as long as i have a good Network connection i.e. 1 GB i don't see a problem.

I have tested hosting a datbase from our raid system through our FM Server and there seems to be NO problems what so ever.

I mounted the raid volume to the Fm server, located the DB on the raid and hosted it.

the only problem i see is when the Raid backup is run as it will backup a live database. but i can choose not to back up this part of the raid through our backup script.

Just read the FM Server Best Practices - very helpful Thanks.

I have decided that i will keep my DB's local.

Next question!..

if i create a schedule from FM Server 5.5 to backup the databses to an external source e.g. Raid whilst the hosted databases are in use will this cause any corruption to the hosted DB's?

Currently the backup is run on a night whilst no one is logged on to the hosted DB's.

Thanks again.

Ricardo

Provided that you use the built-in scheduler in FileMAker Server 5.5 to do this, there should be no problem caused by the action. The built in scheduler pauses the file before backing it up.

Under NO circumstances should you allow any other backup or copying utility any access to the FIleMAker Pro files unless such files are completely closed and FileMaker Server is not running.

HTH

Old Advance Man

If i choose to run a Scheduled back up from Fm Server 5.5 whilst the server is in use i.e. multiple clients logged on to hosted DBs will this be OK?

thanks for your help.

You will be fine. FM Server temporarily pauses each database as it backs it up then restore functionality. Users may notice the coffee cup for a few minutes during backup time, but will soon be back in business.

thanks.

FM Server has a problem backing up a large DB residing on a RAID or backing them up to a RAID. It works fine for small databases but at a certain size, you cannot back up a database to another volume or if it resides on mutiple volumes. My solution for this large database has been to run and backup to the same single volume then run an applescript to copy to a RAID drive. FM tech support has confirmed this limitation.

Is this the FM limitation, or OS?

Are other OS also affected?

FM tech support acknowledges an FM limitation. I have confirmed on OS 9 and OS X.