My Standalone Dilemma

[drdunse]

So I have quite a dilemma on my hands here. The company that I work for has not gotten their hands on my server yet due to the typical corporate ladder of asking for new stuff haha. But this actually puts me in a very tough spot. We have a job coming up that will require our guys, who will be using iPads on site, to have to use standalone solutions instead of being connected to a server and working from the same database. In the grand scheme of things, it won't really effect the outcome of data collection, but there are several here who are concerned about being able to back up the data. Which brings me to the reason of my post.

What is the best way to back up data from filemaker go?

I know that you can back up the entire iPad through iTunes, and that actually would keep all of the records for the database on the back up. But I'm being met with some resistance on that front from our survey guys. They are wanting to know if it would be possible to use synology on a LAN, which would create their own little cloud on site, which would be nice considering that internet connection is going to be spotty, if they will have any at all. But I haven't been able to find anything through research about being able to do anything like this. I mean, you can't even put your files from filemaker into the dropbox app contained within the same iPad, so why would it be any different with the Synology app.

If anyone has any interesting ideas or work arounds pertaining to this kind of stuff, I'm all ears.

I've been looking into this stuff for a couple of days now, and my action item list is building, so I don't have much free time to dedicate to this anymore, even though the project is launching in 2 weeks.

Thanks in advance.

[Josh Ormond]

What kind of (technical) environment will they be in? Would you be able to set up a local machine "on-site" with a wifi router that they can all connect to? You could then bring that data back to the main server and sync it.

Setting this up on-site will carry with it the same requirements, and have to be hosted on FM Server. It will be important to make sure you back up the data, in addition to normal backups, to an external drive after you close the files and shut down FMS. That way if anything happens to the internal drive during transport, you have the data on an external drive.

[drdunse]

we do have a router we could send with them and a synology box. could i host a filemaker server through that as an on site server without it being directly connected to the internet you think? and i could have our lead guy manually back it up every half day or something on an external drive, because that actually sounds like a decent idea to me. I do have a copy of filemaker 12 server that i could use, if you think it would be viable.

there is a big problem though, and that would be connectivity. its a big site, and there's no way that they would be able to stay connected to the server throughout the site 

[Wim Decorte]

Sounds like you should set up a syncing routine from the iPads back to your main FMS box so that users can do that in the evening or whenever they have connectivity?

[Josh Ormond]

I agree with Wim, If the site is that big, sync is your best solution. Make sure the sync works exactly the way you want. Test thoroughly. 

[drdunse]

Thank you for the advice guys!

[OlgerDiekstra]

we do have a router we could send with them and a synology box. could i host a filemaker server through that as an on site server without it being directly connected to the internet you think? and i could have our lead guy manually back it up every half day or something on an external drive, because that actually sounds like a decent idea to me. I do have a copy of filemaker 12 server that i could use, if you think it would be viable.

there is a big problem though, and that would be connectivity. its a big site, and there's no way that they would be able to stay connected to the server throughout the site 

Synology is a Linux based NAS, not a MAC or Windows server, so you can't run FM on it. Being a NAS, you can store a database on a share. With the Synology app, you can sync the Go DB right from the iPad, if you can copy the data from FMGo into the Synology app. Never tried it. I have 2 Synology NAS's at work and a bunch of iPads, and use the Synology app, along side with FMgo, but the iPads connect either to a local DB or to a FMserver.

Being a Linux box, you have access to SSH on the Synology and can create scripts and schedule those if you need to. Ie sync data every x hours back to HO.