This article will serve you, the IT Manager, as a guide of what's required to setup Streamtime Classic and Streamtime Web.
Streamtime support takes care of the FileMaker Server and Streamtime installations, but before we get going, there are a few things that need to be checked / set up.
FileMaker Server requirements
Client machine's requirements
Network requirements
Changing network settings
Backups
1. FileMaker Server
Before we install FileMaker server, please check that the machine meets the minimum system requirements for FileMaker Server 16.
FileMaker advises that FileMaker Server is installed on a dedicated machine with the below recommendations:
FILEMAKER SERVER CONFIGURATION BEST PRACTICES (Windows)
Do not run other services, such as email, print or file sharing on the same machine running FileMaker Server.
Do not use system backup software to backup the live database files served by FileMaker Server.
Do not use anti-virus software to scan the live database files hosted by FileMaker Server.
Disable screen savers and energy-saving functions that may interrupt access to the files hosted by FileMaker Server.
Turn off Windows Indexing Service, this can reduce the performance of FileMaker Server
Disable Windows Shadow Copy
You must also allow FileMaker Server to do it’s own backups, then you can come along with 3rd party backup and “backup the backups”
FILEMAKER SERVER CONFIGURATION BEST PRACTICES (Mac OSX)
Install FileMaker Server on a dedicated machine on a supported operating system
Do not run other services, such as email, print or file sharing on the same machine running FileMaker Server.
Do not use system backup software to backup the live database files served by FileMaker Server.
Do not use anti-virus software to scan the live database files hosted by FileMaker Server.
Disable screen savers and energy-saving functions that may interrupt access to the files hosted by FileMaker Server.
Turn off Spotlight indexing, this can reduce the performance of FileMaker Server
Verify that Time Machine is configured to exclude the FileMaker Server folder, or disable it entirely.
2. Minimum Requirements for Client machines
To access FileMaker Pro download files and minimum system requirements check out this article here.
3. Network Setup for Streamtime Web and remote access
- How does it work?
Streamtime Web sends requests to the Web Server on FileMaker Server's machine; the Web Server receives the request, passes it onto FileMaker Server’s Web Publishing Engine, the data requested is then returned to Streamtime Web.
If the server is on a private network:
The router must have Static Public IP Address (given by Internet Service Provider) the FileMaker Server machine should also have a Static Local IP Address which does not change.
**If the IP Address of the FileMaker Server machine changes over time, this will break all connection to Streamtime Web.
- What do you need to do?
You will need to configure a port forwarding rule in the router to forward any web requests coming in and direct that traffic over to the the Web Server running on the FileMaker Server machine via it's Static Local IP Address.
Most Web Servers will be running on port 80 or 443 so a typical port forward rule would look something similar to:
WebRequests > WebServer on FileMaker Server > via Port
HTTP > 192.168.0.100 > 80
To access Streamtime remotely via FileMaker Pro, you will also need to open port 5003 and route that traffic to the FileMaker Server machine.
More information on the different options for remote access can be found here.
4. Changing the network settings on the server
Do not change the local network settings while FileMaker Server is running! This would kill the web services at the very least, but it could also affect the database server and require updates to port forwarding on the router. If this is done in the wrong way, everything may need to be reinstalled from scratch.
Please contact Streamtime support team first.
5. Backups
We recommend our clients to keep hourly and daily backups of Streamtime. We also recommend that a copy of Streamtime is kept in a different location to the FileMaker Server machine for safe keeping.
**If you have time machine running or any other backup software, please ensure that you exclude the live Databases folder from being backed up as this can cause file corruption.
More information on backups can be found in the articles below: