Filemaker Server Containor Locations

[Yogi Bear]

Hello,

We have just moved our FM CRM from being hosted on a P2P network to Filemaker server 14. Going forward we also want to attaché documents to clients.

As these attachments might be large, it might be an idea to have them stored in an external container. There is a default container linked to the DB but I can't edit it or change the location. (See picture). Ideally I would like to specify a UNC path and have them stored in a separate folder on our Fileserver.

1. Am I correct that there is no way to change the location, or am I missing something?

2. Is there way to change the name of the path? i.e. the original DB name was invoices but now is called something else. Where do I look?

3. What do other people recommend for storage of attachments? Our old CRM generated thousands of files totalling ~ 15Gb over 4 years.

I just can't seem to find very much info on this topic on google. Feel free to to send me lmtgfy.com link

Platform: Filemaker Pro 14 / FMS 14 running on Windows 2012R2

Best regards, JS

[Wim Decorte]

Hello,

ideally I would like to specify a UNC path and have them stored in a separate folder on our Fileserver.

Nope: "UNC" implies that you want to use OS-level file sharing.  Do not ever do that for live files or live container data.

If you want to specify a particular path beyond the default as you have in the screenshot you have to configure that when the file is not hosted.  And you have to remember that whatever path you specify is going to be relative to the file's location on FMS.  Which is what the [hosted location] indicator is all about.

FMS will create the folders and manage the files, don't try and force something where you want to put the files on a network share etc.

[Bertie]

Does this mean when hosted on Fm Server the container data is always going to be a sub folder of the database folder?

I need the Database files in the default location but the container data stored on an external volume, is this not possible?

[JerrySalem]

buried in this blog is a technique to move the location of the container external folder to a different location.

Hope this helps.

 

https://buzz.beezwax.net/2014/04/21/100x-faster-flight-testing-filemaker-13-perform-script-on-server-part-ii/

 

 

[Bertie]

This is still the database folder in library, you can't specify a remote volume for the container data. The Container data is always in the data folder, you can specify the folder sure, but it's always in the data folder.

[Wim Decorte]

Depends on your version of FMS... in 14 you can specify an additional data folder AND an additional RC container folder that can be anywhere on the computer.  It can't be in areas that are considered slow or fragile (like NASes, network shares away from the FMS box,...)

[BrentHedden]

Depends on your version of FMS... in 14 you can specify an additional data folder AND an additional RC container folder that can be anywhere on the computer.  It can't be in areas that are considered slow or fragile (like NASes, network shares away from the FMS box,...)

This is one of the more compelling reasons to use FMS 14.  If you want to separate the database files from the externally stored container data into separate folders/drives/whatever (which is part of the original request), you have to this feature on v14.  You can't have a database file in the default /data/databases/ folder and expect it's RC data to be in this 'other' folder.  

I'm using this feature so that the backup schedules won't include the RC/container data along with the database files each time.  It takes a significant amount of room with the amount of backup schedules and RC data that we have, and it improves system performance significantly.  Especially when there are several users on the system and it's trying to perform it's hourly backup.  For the RC data, I just use a separate backup program scheduled once daily, since this data doesn't change often.  

Having this 'Back up container data folder 1' option unchecked also affects the progressive backup feature (it only backs up the database files), which will possibly mess up plans to use the new backup server feature.  For my purposes, I've not worried about it.