Administrator’s Guide

34 FileMaker Server Administrator’s Guide
In addition, enable the Auto Update plug-in in FileMaker Pro
preferences before attempting to open hosted files that require plug-
ins.
Note FileMaker Pro can check the version of plug-in files required by
a hosted database and update plug-ins if the current version is not
located on the client computer. For more information about
downloading plug-ins automatically, see the
FileMaker Server Guide
to Updating Plug-ins
.
Setting database properties
Windows: Change database properties in the Database Hosting
assistant or select host and then choose
Action menu > Properties >
Databases
tab.
Mac OS: To change database properties, choose View menu >
Configure
, then click the Databases tab.
Setting the maximum number of files
You can specify the maximum number of database files
FileMaker
Server can host at one time. If you consistently monitor
database usage, you can set the maximum number of files for best
performance on your server. For information on performance and
optimizing memory settings, see Help.
Changing the amount of memory used by FileMaker Server
Use Reserve n MB of RAM for database cache to specify a cache size for
FileMaker
Server. Increasing the RAM reserved for the database
cache can speed up overall performance for a correctly designed
database, especially if your server hosts large files or a large number
of clients or files.
For information on performance and optimizing memory properties,
see Help.
Setting the cache flushing distribution interval
In FileMaker Server, the cache is constantly being flushed. The cache
flushing routine scans the cache, looking for pages that have changed.
FileMaker Server inspects up to 1/60th of the cache and writes any
changed pages it discovers to the disk. The process repeats
continuously, writing 1/60 of the cache to disk every second, even
during scheduled backups.
For example, in a 64MB cache, FileMaker Server will inspect up to
1/60th of the cache, or a little more than a megabyte, and flush all of
the changed records it finds. It will then wait a second and begin again,
inspecting up to 1/60th of the cache, looking for changed records. This
method of flushing the cache distributes writing to the hard disk over
the span of a minute.