Studio 5000 V30.00.00

dave948

Member
Join Date
Sep 2012
Location
Boston
Posts
19
My company just purchased studio 5000 V30 for an upcoming project. I'm trying to decide how and where I want to handle the license key. Our outsourced IT company wants to put everything on the server and remote into it. That will work as long as I have a network connection but may be slow. I want to just install it on the same laptop I already use for RS500 and just ghost the drive to the spare I have at the shop.
Thoughts and suggestions, what is everyone else doing?
 
Software only needs to see an acceptable license key like once every 7 days. Whenever it sees a good license, it resets the grace period. So if it was stored on a server, as long as you had intermittent connection, it shouldn't be a problem. The benefit is that you can set the license up to be used on multiple computers that way, with each one checking it out to work and checking it back in when they are done.

However, if you only foresee a single computer being used to do development work, there's no reason for the license to be stored on a remote server and it would be less complicated to just have it on your laptop locally.
 
I brought up using a dongle before and they seem to think it's much easier to lose than a laptop, and yes we have lost laptops.
I like the license on the server idea.
 
Is it just the one license and single user? Then just keep the license file on the laptop.

If it has to be shared then use an activation server and have the laptop point to it for licensing requests, note you can "borrow" licenses from the server for an extended period of time, but of course nobody else could use it.

Note, you can activate the license against a USB Ethernet adapter MAC address. Cheaper and more useful than a dongle.
 
Another datapoint: my company has a 10-user license on a server inside our network.

We've had three laptops stolen or destroyed this year and didn't have to do anything to recover the licenses.

When I travel I can generally connect to the server at least once a week to refresh the licenses. If I need to, I can "borrow" the license from the server and won't even need to do that.

It's a little annoying to run in "grace period" mode because of the slower startup of Studio 5000 while it searches for the license, and because of "pop-under" notifications that suddenly stall your work and cause you to go clicking on the taskbar.

But if that's my biggest problem in any given workday, I'm doing pretty well.
 
We stick everything on a VM, I mean everything. Then make a copy which resides in my travel bag on a external drive.

Any problems, just copy it across and your good to go within minutes.

(Which has happened on a couple of occasions whilst travelling)
 
We use a license server in the Control domain, where all of the PLCs are. 6 RSLogix 5000, 2 RSLogix 500, RSNetworx for Cnet, Dnet, Enet. Factorytalk view, historian. One of the panelbuilder systems that needs a license.

A couple of laptops are set up for RSLogix 5000, RS Studio, RSlogix 500, Panelbuilder, Component workbench .. I think that's it.

Wired network connection to the control domain when we are connected to any of the ControlLogix or Micrologix to access the license server. You can use the license server from laptop or virtual desktops use to program in the Control domain. As for the 7 day issue .. my experience is that when the laptop sees a valid license, it is good to go the next time you use it. That's when the 7 day timer seems to start. We just back up the PLC and panelview files once a week so the laptops have them locally .. just in case. Normally we load the program files from the network before using them to ensure the latest copy. But it the server is down, we have a recent copy so most of the documentation is there.

The license server is a VM. There is a jump point in the DMZ ... a bit fuzzy on that one ... that allows the VM to get windows updates. We vet the Rockwell updates and install them via a system called Bomgar, from our desktops (admin domain) to the server in the control domain.

We have a dongle and tried using it, but it took one of each license permanently off the license server. The 7 day thing works fine for us so far. Our dongle does not have any licenses on it right now.
 

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