FTView SE Server/Client vs Station

BPyles

Member
Join Date
Apr 2014
Location
Canton Ohio
Posts
15
I have an application (2 identical lines) that has 2 CompactLogix PLCs and 4 PCs total (1 PLC & 2 PCs/Line). The PCs are right now stand alone (runs Windows 7 with office and a workorder system/part tracking software etc.).



They want to add some controls to the operators at the PC station and would like FTView SE.



My question is which setup to go with: 4 SE clients + 1 SE Server OR 4 SE Stations.



Can one server take care of multiple PLCs? Whats the major difference between both setups? pros? cons?



Ideally I would like 4 different runtime versions so that the operator doesn't operate a different line then his own.



In my research I found that the cost for 4 station licenses was cheaper than server/client.
 
Go for 4 stations to minimize downtime, but you expect no/few changes to the HMI project. If one PC fails, all the others can keep on running.

Go for the client/server if you expect to make HMI changes frequently after commissioning the lines. The server/client was designed to make (most) changes during runtime operations.

Keep in mind that each station would talk to each PLC on it's own; that's 4x the traffic. Compared to the network server/client solution where just the one server talks to each PLC.
 
Go for 4 stations to minimize downtime, but you expect no/few changes to the HMI project. If one PC fails, all the others can keep on running.

Go for the client/server if you expect to make HMI changes frequently after commissioning the lines. The server/client was designed to make (most) changes during runtime operations.

Keep in mind that each station would talk to each PLC on it's own; that's 4x the traffic. Compared to the network server/client solution where just the one server talks to each PLC.

concur

Much easier to make updates with SE server. And yes you can create multiple projects from one SE server instance, you just don't make navigation links between screens and create different shortcut files for each project which launch different initial screes.
 
If you don't absolutely have to have SE server.......don't.

Lack of client side tags is a PIA.

Lots of gotchas in SE Server.
 
For a Greenfield application like this there are much better choices for a distributed HMI that FT View but if you are holding strong with using FT View then I would use server and not station.

Using 4 instances of station hitting your PLC may be a bit much depending on the HMI application itself but also your network may not be setup to handle that traffic. If you are using non managed switches I can almost guarantee it will be challenging and depending on if your PLC application is using unicast or multicast will make a difference.

You may be best served to enlist the help of a local integrator or you AB distributors tech guy to help answer some of the questions before you make your decision.
 
There is a lot of things to think about....
I don't think there will be many changes as there is only going to be a few screens. We are on a VLAN each machine has its own so I don't think I need to be too concerned with the traffic...

I have my AB Supplier coming in tomorrow so I will see what he says but I think I am leaning towards Station (its cheaper too)
 
interesting thread, I too was having the same problem
g.png
 
If your alarms are important I'd go Server as your server is likely to have a higher availability than the desktop Station HMI. If your SE station PC is not powered on or logged in to you will miss any alarms from the PLC.

I think you'll find that once you have an SE server it proliferates as it is so easy to make another HMI for another application. You may also end up with more clients as they are easy to add - especially if they are Viewpoint clients which are web based thin clients allowing anyone to access the HMI when needed.
 
There is a lot of things to think about....
I don't think there will be many changes as there is only going to be a few screens. We are on a VLAN each machine has its own so I don't think I need to be too concerned with the traffic...

I have my AB Supplier coming in tomorrow so I will see what he says but I think I am leaning towards Station (its cheaper too)

You need to be concerned with the traffic hitting the PLC, not what is on the network. 4 times the connections to a single PLC can stress out it's comms.
 
Just a note, anywhere we have more than one PC Based HMI on a line, it is FTView Distributed. It is a crappy HMI system, but it mostly works for basic functions, and allows unified datalogging, alarming, events, derived tags, etc.

If you do go distributed, ignore whatever anyone else may tell you, and install the server on a normal Windows PC, not a Windows Server OS. You can put the Server, Communications, and a Client on one PC, or split the server/comms portion out to another PC if you like.

For Sanity Sake, also install a VNC server on each PC you have there. That way, when something gets wierd, you can just VNC to it to take a look, stop runaway processes, or reboot the PC.
 

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