It's highly recommended that you maintain at least hourly scheduled local backups, a progressive backup, and a cloud-based backup of your FileMaker backup. (As with any database system, a cloud-based or Time Machine backup cannot completely backup an active live database. Having a cloud-based and/or Time Machine backup in place is a great idea -- but you will be relying on those systems backing up the backup of your database.)

Scheduled Backups are made intermittently, at various times of day that you've set, but it’s highly recommended to activate the Progressive Backup as well. The Progressive Backup is a continuous backup -- the Database Server only copies the changes from the hosted file. Progressive Backups can run more quickly than a Scheduled Backup, with less impact on server performance.)

You can enable this by going to the FileMaker server console (via Safari) and choosing the "Backups" tab, and on the left side down towards the middle you will see “Progressive Backup” -- click "Change" to Enable it.  This will take you to another section in order to click on the "Enable" switch and to provide a folder path.

Note: You will have to use an external drive for this backup, and the Progressive Backup Path needs to start with: filemac:/FileMaker Backup SSD/ (with the name of your external drive in place of "FileMaker backup SSD"). Note the single backslash following filemac: for macOS. Do not begin the file path with Volumes/, as you'll see an error that the path is not valid.

Image Placeholder


If you are unable to change the path for a Progressive Backup, go to System Preferences >  Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access, and from the list of applications on the right, make sure that FileMaker Pro and fmserver_helperd are both checked.  If this is not present please add it via this path: 

Mac HD/Library/FileMaker Server/Database Server/bin


Image Placeholder


Having an off-site backup is important -- but keep in mind, some cloud backup solutions do not backup the Library folders where Filemaker databases are stored. In this case, you will need to instruct FileMaker server to write its daily backups into another folder on your hard drive outside of the default Library folder location (such as your Documents folder). After creating this new folder for the Daily Backups you'll need to apply FileMaker permissions to the folder to get new path working. Get Info on the folder and add a user named "fmserver" to apply privileges to that folder.
Image Placeholder
CheckIn is not responsible for your backup setup, but we are happy to offer guidance. You can search FileMaker's web site for more info on backups as well as the many other posts and resources that exist online. Here is helpful FileMaker link: https://support.claris.com/s/article/Creating-backups-with-FileMaker- Server-1503692961205?language=en_US#2


Some Backup Ideas:

  • Use TimeMachine to backup the entire server 
  • + Another external drive to house the Progressive backup + BackBlaze cloud backup to backup the FileMaker local backup & the Progressive backup.  
  • You can point the hourly backups to your iCloud drive as well.

FYI:  (The Default FileMaker nightly backups are saved on the server)