Subtitles of the Movie

This movie will give you a high-level overview of the Server Admin Console. There are separate movies on each individual configuration option and feature for more detailed information. The Server Admin Tool is often referred to as the SAT Tool or the Server Admin Tool and it is the main interface for interacting with FileMaker Server. As we have seen in another movie, FileMaker Server itself consists of a set of background components. The Server Admin Console is the user interface for configuring the services. The Admin Console or Admin Tools have seen a number of different skins throughout its history, from a mere plug-in that had to be used inside FileMaker Pro to a MMC Console on Windows and a regular application on OS X to what it is now, a Java applet. There are several good things about it being a Java applet now. It's always up to date since it is downloaded from the server every time you want to use it. And you can run it from any machine very easily without having to install anything, provided that you have the Java runtime environment. And it looks and behaves the same on both Windows and Mac. Windows administrators who are used to the normal Windows standard management tools may not like it since it's definitely not standard on that platform. So let's connect to FileMaker Server. The quickest way to get to the Admin Console, if you don't have it yet, is to go to the FileMaker Server Start Page and you can do that from your browser by going to the IP Address or the DNS Name of your FileMaker Server and specifying port 16,000. From here you can just click the Start Admin Page to launch the Admin Console or you can check some of the other options. It'll tell you what version it is and it'll have some quick links to documentation and to the PHP and XSLT Site Assistant. So let's go ahead and launch the Admin Console. Depending on your browser settings, you may get prompted about Java Web Start Launching and having permission to do so from your browser. So with that out of the way, you will be asked for the admin user name and the password that was configured in the FileMaker Server setup. Depending on the setup, you can also specify any user account and password of a user that belongs to the FSM Admin Group, but that falls under External Authentication that we will talk about in another movie. Once launched, the first thing we see is the status of all the FileMaker Server components. The web server, the web publishing engine and the core database server. The left pane let's you navigate to more detailed statuses about hosted files, clients that may be connected, schedules, some statistics and new to FileMaker Server 10, a Log Viewer where you can check all the FileMaker Server logs. Also in the left panel we have access to all of the configuration settings. The Toolbar on top let's us start and stop the two main FileMaker components; the core database server and the web publishing. Note that stopping these two components does not stop the FileMaker Server services or daemon. The service or daemon keeps running so that you can still connect to it from a remote Admin Console. Also in the Toolbar is a shortcut to upload files directly and there's shortcuts to the FileMaker Server Start Page and the Test Page. To wrap things up, let me answer some frequently asked questions. Can I connect to more than one FileMaker Server at the same time? Well, yes you can. You just need to launch another instance of the Admin Console. Can I connect to my FileMaker Server over the Internet through a firewall or NAT setup? Yes, you can as long as you have the correct ports open on your firewall and forward it to your FileMaker Serve machine. More about ports in a separate movie. Now, there are inherent risks in opening ports on a firewall, of course. There are other alternatives to do remote administration of a FileMaker Server. One options is to set up a VPN or a Virtual Private Network so you can log into your remote network. Once you have a VPN connection, you connect to your FileMaker Serve just like you're actually inside remote network. Another option is to use a Remote Desktop solution, like Windows Remote Desktop, Apple Remote Desktop, VNC, Timbuktu, PC Anywhere. You need to configure this on the FileMaker Server machine. Then you need to configure a firewall and router to forward the relevant ports to the IP Address of your FileMaker Server machine. With this setup, you make a Remote Desktop connection to your FileMaker Server machine and then you can use the Server Admin Console on that machine itself.