Filemaker 10 Server freeze on backup

[drothschild]

Last night, I experienced a problem where an hourly backup of Filemaker Databases on a Windows 2003 virtual server froze without any error messages. I was unable to stop the server either through the console or even through stopping the Filemaker Service directly (I have administrative rights to the machine.) And when I say I couldn't stop Filemaker Server, I mean the hosted databases remained open and I could move from record to record.

Only a restart of the machine fixed the problem, and backups and operation appear to be running smoothly now. Has anyone else experienced a similar issue?

[Wim Decorte]

Any errors / warnings in the system or application event log around the time of the backup?

Where you also doing a verification as part of the backup?

[drothschild]

No warnings or errors at all. And yes, a consistency check was scheduled, but it, along with all other backups, never ran. All we got at 3 AM was "Schedule "Hourly" running." and then nothing.

[Wim Decorte]

What's your setup on the virtual server? Is it part of a VMware farm that might hot-swap between hardware hosts?

[stanley]

Hi Wim

What effect would hot-swapping have?

Thx

Stanley

[Wim Decorte]

Hot swapping means that the whole VMware instance could be moved to a different VMware host server while everything is running... not sure how well FMS survives that.

[stanley]

Wim:

Thanks for that. It certainly sounds like the kind of thing which would cause FMS to break out in a case of the shakes.

Thanks again,

Stanley

[Wim Decorte]

actually, FMS survives that pretty well...

But I'm troubleshooting a few occurrences where I suspect I didn't go perfectly.

[stanley]

Well, that's good to hear. The more we look into our virtualization problems, the less we seem to comprehend...

-Stanley

[Gordy_Mn]

I have observed the same problem, although the admin console "freezing" or becoming "deaf" isn't only when it makes backups. There is a similar thread at the FileMaker site forum, I'd point you there, but it is down for maintenance. The reason I use "freeze" or "deaf" is I've found the console is the problem and that the server is actually working fine, the clients can see the files and operate as usual, I just can't do anything or see things accurately from the console. This can be frustrating. I've usually waited until most users are off and do the steps below so I can restart the server.

Two things I learned is with a windows server you can close the databases and stop the server from the command prompt window. (Thanks to TSGal at FM site for this, credit goes to her.)

Open the command prompt window

Change the directory to:

C:program filesFilemakerFilemaker ServerDatabase Server

Type in the entry "FMSadmin close" (without quotes)

It will ask if you are sure (Y/N). It will then ask for a user ID and password. This is the ID and password you would use on the Admin Console.

Once it shows all the databases as closed the next step is to:

Type in the entry "FMSadmin stop server"

After this I find it best to restart the entire server and this typically brings the Admin Console back to working fine.

Doing this will prevent your data in your databases from risk of corruption. Abruptly restarting the server, killing the process in Task Manger and other methods risk data corruption.

The key is you aren't the only one observing this, and FM has observed it in their test lab. Hope that helps.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

A great deal of this information is covered in the Server Admin Guide. If you are responsible for maintaining FileMaker Server, I recommend a reading of that guide.

Steven

[drothschild]

Gordy and Steve-

Thanks, but I've found that the command line entries don't do anything after I've entered the user name and password.

The freeze seems to happen every time we enable hourly backups, whether or not any clients are actually accessing the files.

My organization has(or will have in a week or so) a support contract with Filemaker, and if they resolve the issue, I'll report back to you on the solution.

Obviously going to the untested, released 2 days ago Filemaker 11 Server is not a possibility, though I am curious if they have resolved this known issue.