Setting up FTView SE on VMWare

Let me start by saying Im totally new to VMWare, but it has now moved out of IT's realm of control and into mine...


Our plant runs 5 different FTV SE applications in different locations. Until this point, each PC running an application is totally stand alone, all software is contained on each PC, and each client runtime has ended up being a tad bit different as a result.


The plant now wants to migrate to a VMWare based system where all applications are managed via a central server, so they all match, and we don't need to keep buying client licenses.


My question is: what license would we need to do this? Distributed server? How many? One for each application? Thanks!

Welcome to the forum!

To do what you're describing, you would use FTView SE Network Distributed. You will need once license for each server, and one license for each client. If you have several different FTView SE standalone applications, you will be able to migrate them reasonably straightforwardly, but depending on your applications, some things may need to be somewhat re-designed. There are development techniques that you can get away with when you're on standalone that won't fly on a multi-client architecture. An example might be populating HMI tags to display on a generic popup. When you only have one client, that's fine, but if you have two separate clients accessing the same popup at the same time, the action of one user could override the previous action of the other user, and have unintended consequences.

What I would do if I were in your situation would be to buy your server license and a single client license, and migrate over one application. Run the standalone side-by-side with the new distributed application until you're confident it works correctly. Then, try to migrate the second. This is where you'll start to discover potential issues with having multiple clients on the same server, so again, run old and new side-by-side until you iron out all the bugs and get it working reliably. Then you can migrate the rest relatively painlessly.

And just an FYI - VMWare really has nothing to do with this. If IT wants you to run this on a virtual platform, that's fine (and probably a good idea) but whether your servers and clients are running on physical machines or virtual ones, the process is the same. I've used VMWare for about a decade now and always found it to be user-friendly and intuitive, so I don't suspect that you'll have too many problems on that end once you get your head around it.

One other question I'd put to the higher-ups - do you need redundancy in the servers? If you have 5 different SCADA screens that can all control the same things, then if one goes down you have no real problems, because you can use one of the other four to keep things running until you get the fifth replaced. But if you've got a network distributed application and your central server goes down, all five of your clients are dead in the water. If you need a backup for this eventuality, you may want to consider redundant servers. This will mean you need two server licenses.

I'd also recommend that your primary server has a license for FTView Studio on it as well - network distributed applications are notoriously painful to backup/restore. You can't just make some changes to a screen and copy a new file over to the server. It's infinitely easier to just do the development directly on the server.

Very helpful, thank you! I will get a distributed license tomorrow and try it out on a network pc before throwing VMware into the mix.

This really sounds like an ideal case to migrate to Ignition.
One license, unlimited clients, unlimited applications, reliable historian...


As it is, with Rockwell, you will still need a Server license for each application, and a client license for each PC you want to run that application on. The best idea there, is to put each application (client/server/both) on a virtual PC anyway, as that is easy to back up and restore when it inevitably crashes and burns.

Yes, Ignition is an interesting proposition. 5 FT server licenses comes at a hefty price. So the single license of Ignition would cover all the different applications and their clients?

Yes.

You'll have to re-do all of your development, which will add to the upfront cost - but yes, long term cost will definitely be lower. And yes, if I were in your situation I'd be pushing ignition very hard as well. SO much better than FTView.

I have a question regarding the price of ignition.
I see that the basic package is $10,800 USD.
But also that i can just configure what i need.

What is the minimum (cheapest) package, if i have just a small machine with a single HMI.
I would need:
- One HMI
- Alarms
- Audit trail
- Trends.

Is this included in the Vision Module Limited $3,700?
Or what else would i need, beside the driver for my PLC?

I kow i could ask inductive automation directly. But maybe someone of you already knows this.
My goal is to compare it to a FTV Network Station.

Best regards
crawler009

Honestly, the best thing you an do, is give a call to Inductive Automation and talk to sales there. My sales person has been extremely helpful to me, and only prices out what I need when I call for specific things.


Case in point... During my initial roll-out of Ignition, the first actual machine on the floor with it, I was worried about potential network issues to the server, and after talking to him, he priced me out a local client for about $1500 for that machine. It runs the exact same application as is on the server, but if I cut the network connection, it falls back to running on the local client in about 15 seconds. It doesn't have database access, or SQC, but at least the line would keep running. For what it is worth, it has never switched to the local client except for testing in a year.

lftmx3 said:

Yes, Ignition is an interesting proposition. 5 FT server licenses comes at a hefty price. So the single license of Ignition would cover all the different applications and their clients?

Click to expand...

If you use a distributed architecture, you don't need five server licenses, just one. With redundancy, then two.

rdrast said:

Honestly, the best thing you an do, is give a call to Inductive Automation and talk to sales there. My sales person has been extremely helpful to me, and only prices out what I need when I call for specific things...

Click to expand...

ok, yes.. probably its the best option.
thankx anyway