FM Server access over WAN

[martinezd01]

Our company has utilized FM for over a decade, we are an organization that is scattered throughout Southern CA. They have always deployed/produced FM for remote users over a leased line (Frame Relay -- now MPLS) via Citrix. Which I believe was the recomended way on FM Pro 6 and lower. We are now on FM Pro 11 with FM 10 Server Advanced. We are trying to utilize "Containers" in our FM Solution and streamline a process for our workflow. Well we need it to talk to an applicaton that is installed locally on the clients and not on the Terminal/Citrix Servers. So we have one remote site with about 10 remote users and installed FMPro 11 locally on their workstations and stopped Terminal/Citrix Services at their site. They immediately notices a delay in FileMaker. I was under the impression that FM 10 and above were WAN Friendly. I understand the concept of ICA and its encapsulation, and we were just representing the users keystrokes and screen refreshes and the client was installed locally here on the Citrix Servers (communication with FM Server was done on 1Gbps backbone). The WAN is a dedicated T1 (MPLS) circuit with a bandwidth utilization of 100Kb/s constant. Once we moved their FM Clients to their local stations i did not see an increase in network bandwidth they are now 150kb/s utilization. So if it is not bandwidth problem, we have off loaded them from a server that was 60% resource utilized to their own dedicated workstations. I would think that FM would have improved??? Is it the scripting involved in our solution that is causing the delay? Our solution has not been revamped at all... It was originally built about 10 years ago and we have just been adding to the solution and never really changing the solution. I have been really involved with our FM DB for the last three years. In fact I am getting ready to become FM Certified. So I see some of the relationships that are not efficeintly deployed, unstored Calc in search scripts. I see delays in some queries in my workstation and I am locally at HQ. So before I go to the project team and say that this is not going to work, (keep in mind I told them that it was WAN friendly and we will be able to do this). I really need the answer as to why this is not going to work. Where should I be looking for this information. Should I be capturing Network traffic via sniffer (Ethereal, Etherpeek) to see if we are having packets drop (TCP/ACK)? What statistics/information can our FileMaker Server offer to help point me to the right direction? Any info/input is GREATLY APPRECIATED!

[Russell Barlow]

One word, Latency. If your not under 100 to your filemaker server, you will notice a large slowdown from my experiences. On an MPLS, this should be doable. You may want to check if your company is doing any QoS with traffic and have them escalate the port traffic 5003 for incoming.

Of course, terminal services are much faster, if you can get your latency under 100 for the connections to the FMS server...its not bad if your design doesn't have a ton of "easy" filtered portals or massive amounts of displayed unstored calcs.

Edited July 22, 2011 by Russell Barlow

[martinezd01]

Thanks Russell for your reply! Latency is highlighted on our white board! What metric is the 100 in? ms? we do have QoS for VoIP in some of our Remote offices I can certainly apply QoS for this type of traffic to see if it will help.

[Russell Barlow]

Thanks Russell for your reply! Latency is highlighted on our white board! What metric is the 100 in? ms? we do have QoS for VoIP in some of our Remote offices I can certainly apply QoS for this type of traffic to see if it will help.

100ms, sorry.

[martinezd01]

What utilities do you suggest on testing the link speed? Path ping shows 11ms to each hop from client to server...

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Not always, but mostly all the time, the principal reason for "slow" WAN based performance is file architecture. If you're coming to the Developer Conference next week, there is a session on that topic by the FMI Chief Server Engineer.

One thing that might improve your performance is to use FileMaker® Server 11.

Steven

[Russell Barlow]

What utilities do you suggest on testing the link speed? Path ping shows 11ms to each hop from client to server...

If your using Windows Server 2008, you can use the resource monitor and monitor the connections to the server.

If your using Windows Server 2003, you can use linkspeed.exe from the Server 2003 Resource Kit to test link speed to machines over the WAN.

PS: I agree with anything Steven B. or Wim D. says when it comes to Security/Server. Steven is absolutely correct in that many speed issues due come from not being optimized for WAN performance. I just know that I noticed a HUGE difference after we got our link speed down from 300-500ms to the Filemaker Server to under 100ms from all our sister locations across the US. I do not know the difference in WAN performance with Filemaker Server 10 to Version 11 as we upgrade from 9 to 11 and when that move was made, we were operating a newly designed system.

The only hangup I have still is large value list that is used for selecting a ship to location when there are not "approved" locations for the customer. Aside from that, everything is very smooth.

We are currently looking to implement a suggested method from Wim D. from World Sync as we expand our system to 4 more locations by the years end which will allow us to run locally and sync back to a hub.