More Wonderware help - DASABCIP driver

I have a system that is running parallel Wonderware servers with I believe to be version 10.0. Each server polls each PLC individually. The Wonderware application has a manual switch over between servers but it also has both servers available in the Access Name config. This system was implemented about 2-3 years ago by another company. I've been tasked with the ongoing service work. Until March or so of this year, everything was working properly, then the servers would intermittently not pull data from the PLCs. I fixed it in March by copying the DASABCIP driver config file from Server 2 to Server 1. Everything worked fine for about 5 months. Now we're having the same problem. The previous driver version was 4.xx but I've since updated both to 5.xx. This fixed one of the servers but now the other is having problems. The only reason I updated the second server that was working fine was because I read somewhere how different driver versions would compile the data differently and may cause issues. After updating the second server, the problems only then started on that machine. I've attached pictures (not screenshots as pics of the screens were most efficient at the time) showing the different number of tags and such between the two servers. I understand if the server isn't active, it the tags shouldn't necessarily show up. I changed Advise only active items and advise all on the second server and nothing changed. I'm currently waiting on a response from WW West of why this is happening. I'm thinking my best option is to roll back the driver to 4.xx but I'm not sure if that will be the fix.

On a side note, the servers aren't setup to be synchronized since I don't think this option became available until 10.2. I also heard that this version (10.0) has a known problem of disconnecting from PLCs with slow changing data and this was fixed in 10.5 or at least WW West Tech Support said this isn't an issue in the newest version. Historian Synchronization would basically eliminate the logged data issues but real time values will still have issues.

Have any of you come across this before and if so, what was the fix?

Thank you in advance.

Jay

On the surface, sounds like a hotfix issue to me.

How many engines do you have running the topics? 1 engine (per server) for all topics, or multiple spread out engines? In the past DASABCIP had issues with multiple engines failing over and timing out and/or bouncing back and worth between servers constantly. I'm not sure if this still exist in 5.x. There was a version of 4.x (I think 4.2) that WW recommend not running redundancy on, however I would suspect that they have issued hot fixes or service pack for that by now, and that 5.x should have the latest builds.

I don't think rolling back to an earlier version of DAS would help you any as you would still need the latest hotfixes and service packs. WW should be able to work with you on the issue you are seeing and tell you if you are missing any hotfixes.

Mort81,I appreciate the comments. Let me see if I can answer your questions how I understand them. I have three DAS drivers per physical server(ABCIP, ABTCP, MBTCP). The two physical servers are duplicates. I only updated (and downloaded) the drivers in the last couple weeks, so I would assume the driver has the latest hotfixes but I can't guarantee. The driver version is 5.0. I will check with WW and see if there is anything additional I need.

I also found this on another thread here. I may not have looked using the proper phrase to get this result. I will try this also regarding deleting the database.

Posted by DMCCABE on May 27, 2014

I worked through this issue with WonderWare tech support today and learned that it is due to the temporary database cache DASABCIP.4 uses to load the tag names.

2 methods for resolving this are to un-check "Use Persisted Tags" so the DAServer pulls a fresh tag database from the PLC's each time it is started, or to stop the DAServer, delete the database cache files with file extension .AATDB, and then restart the DAServer. The second option will force the DAServer to pull a fresh tag database from the PLCs as well.

I was also informed that updating to SP3 will resolve this issue and reduce the frequency at which this problem may occur.

This post helped me sort through this problem so I thought I would add my experience. Thanks!

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