Speed up Filemaker Database over internet

[Andrew Robinson]

We have Filemaker Pro 10 Server running on a Mac Pro running snow leopard. On our LAN the speed is fine. We share the file over the web and its painfully slow. We have a 10meg leased line, so its 10meg up and 10meg down(uncontended).

The filemaker pro database file is now 500mb.

Does anyone have any advice?

I have been told to upgrade to FM12 which I plan to do, but is there anything else I can try.

[liltbrockie]

Use RDP

[John May - Point In Space]

Minimize your use of:

summary fields

list views

sorting

sorted portals and relationships

non-native graphics on layouts

unstored calcs

lists that use filtered relationships or that display a second field while storing a key

- John

[Steven H. Blackwell]

WAN performance is impacted by a number of factors including bandwidth, latency, server hardware, especially hard drive subsystem, and especially file architecture. John May offers good suggestions.

Steven

[Andrew Robinson]

Minimize your use of:

summary fields

list views

sorting

sorted portals and relationships

non-native graphics on layouts

unstored calcs

lists that use filtered relationships or that display a second field while storing a key

- John

 

 

Thanks John, unfortunately my database uses all of the above. What you have above is everything that makes FM a viable option.

 

We are moving from FMP 10 - 12 this week to make use of 64 bit processing.

 

Looking to maybe update the Mac Pro 2GHZ Dual Core Zeon to something a bit newer. Does anyone think thats a good idea? Mac Mini i7?

[Andrew Robinson]

I have a Mac Pro Dual Core Xeon 2.0 GHZ from about 2008 currently running our FMP 10 Server.

 

Just upgrading to FMP12 Server and wondering if I should keep the Mac Pro or upgrade to Mac Mini i7.

 

Any views?

[Russell Barlow]

To be honest, if your using all the listed options above and are having speed issues, hardware will probably not make a huge difference.  WAN speed optimization always gets a larger boost from database optimization over hardware improvements in my experience.

[milanm]

I agree with Russell, i am trying to sort out the same issue and upgrading to the newest and powerfull platform (FileMaker Server 12 Advanced running on Mac Pro Server medio 2010) did not help at all.

I wonder if anyone in the community could come up with a fair tutorial on what could be and what could not be expected from filemaker pro platform, so people dont run into building features that will just not work as expected when they "leave home".

I could suggest 2 artcles on the web that look interesting in regards to this issue:

1) Solving Performance Emergencies with FileMaker Server, Brian Dunning: http://www.briandunning.com/browse/browse0110.shtml

2) Finding the Bottleneck, Honza Koudelka:http://fmbench.com/bottleneck (this one is selling some plugin that did not work for me, but in general offers an interesting way of thinking on the subject).

[IdealData]

If you want to find out if your solution will work (realistically) over WAN then develop on a network with your network connection restricted to 10-20Mbps connection to the server.

[Caromsoft]

Did you increase the FM Server cache when you went to 12? FMS12 can use 1/2 of installed RAM as cache up to 1TB.

[James Gill]

If you want to find out if your solution will work (realistically) over WAN then develop on a network with your network connection restricted to 10-20Mbps connection to the server.

 

While that's a start, you'd also need to find a way to restrict latency from sub-1ms LAN times to the 15-40ms (Excellent), 50-70ms (Acceptable), >80ms (tragic) ping times over a WAN.  Theres also no way (at least that I know of) to simulate loss and fluctuating ping/latency times that are often symptomatic of operating on a WAN.

 

In my experience, network latency has a huge part to due with the slow performance of FMP over a LAN.  The reason I say that is because I've used FMP over a full 100Mbps connection on both client and server-side and it's still been abhorrently slow when compared to even a 100BaseT LAN connection.

[Wim Decorte]

If you are on a Mac, try  "Network link Conditioner".  It lets you

- throttle the bandwidth

- set a download and uplink delay (latency)

- set a % of dropped packets in download and upload

- set a DNS delay