Administrator’s Guide (Mac OS)

Technical specifications and optimization A-3
1 Limit connected AppleShare users.
Users connected to an AppleShare server occupy a physical connection to
the server known as a socket. Sockets are also used by FileMaker Pro
Server when guests access a hosted file on a computer running
AppleShare. If many users are connected to the AppleShare server and are
occupying these sockets, fewer sockets are available to FileMaker Pro
Server. This could cause FileMaker Pro guests to receive the “Exceeded
the host capacity” message and prevent them from accessing hosted
databases on the server, even if the limits in “Limits for files and usage”
on page A-1 haven’t been reached.
1 Use a third party server access monitoring utility to keep the number of
AppleShare connections to a minimum and only allow active connections
to exist.
This lets FileMaker Pro Server use the maximum number of sockets for
guests of FileMaker Pro files. For more information about configuring
AppleShare software, see the documentation that came with it.
Disable personal file sharing
Although it’s possible to use System 7 personal file sharing to connect to a
different computer and use FileMaker Pro Server to host FileMaker Pro files
located there, avoid doing this. Consider specifically disabling the sharing
capability of the FileMaker Pro Server 3.0 Folder in the Finder or disabling
file sharing globally with the Sharing Setup control panel. (See the System 7
documentation for details about personal file sharing.)
Disabling sharing prevents users from accessing the volume or folder
(through personal file sharing) and hosting FileMaker Pro files intended to
be hosted by FileMaker Pro Server. To access a file as a guest, always use
the Hosts dialog box from within FileMaker Pro.
Note If FileMaker Pro Server is experiencing heavy use, disabling personal
file sharing may also improve performance by a small amount.
Other software interactions
Avoid using screen saver software that creates moving images on the
monitor of the computer running FileMaker Pro Server. This type of
software can use significant system resources, which hinders the processing
of FileMaker Pro Server networking traffic. Use a screen saver that blacks
out your monitor or dims its brightness, or manually dim the monitor.