Virtual Machines In A Production Environment

Would you guys run a virtual server in a production environment?
How stable or robust are virtual machine about dealing with real Ethernet connections? Example..Communicating to 20 SLC across the US for starters.
We are being forced into MS Hyper-V ->Server 2003 and Rockwell products [FT SE, RSLinx Enterprise and FT ViewPoint]. We have no issues with the RS products on real machines but I have been told they run fine in VMware but have not been run in the Hyper-V environment or in actual production environments.


Thanks,
Bob

Hey Bob O,

We use VMware extensively. Can't vouch for MS Hyper V but the solutions
offered by VMware make it a much better solution than standard server redundancy.

Perhaps you can fill us in with the options with MS Hyper V.

Good Luck,

(8{)} .)
(Yosi)

Virtualization is ready for the enterprise. It adds redundancy/scalability features (V-Motion on the VMWare side, Hyper-V must have something similar). It's also a little more for you/IT to learn. It really does simplify disaster recovery, though.

Hyper-V runs on Windows 2008. You mean you're going to run a virtualized Win 2003 server on that?

As far as your Ethernet question, 20 PLC connections is light traffic in the grand scheme of things. If it makes you feel better, you can configure how your physical NICs are mapped into virtual ones. You can give each virtual server its own dedicated interface, for example.

I've heard of a lot of VMWare installs, no Hyper-V yet. Is Rockwell selling/endorsing this solution? I'd confirm vendor buy in prior to purchase to cover yourself.

anecdotal only - a buddy told me of problems he ran into running a proprietary comm protocol (that used DCOM for its tunneling) on a virtual Windows O/S. He'd done enough DCOM config to be proficient at it. When they got stymied and went to a hardware machine/O/S, the DCOM ran fine, the comm protocol worked OK.

I doubt that today Rockwell or other vendors will certify their products for virtual environments. That's the key to a virtual machine, it should perfectly emulate a real PC and not require software makers to "certify".

VMWare has a broad line of virtualization products and Microsoft's Hyper-V is aiming to take a swipe of that market share. I wouldn't hesitate to use VMWare anywhere. I use it on my work laptops and my home computer. Reliability has never been an issue. Compatibility on the other hand can be an issue as it will not recognize proprietary hardware.

I have not yet used Hyper-V but from what I have read so far it will be equally reliable. Previous Microsoft attempts at virtual environments were not especially good (hence the DCOM issue mentioned above) but it looks like with Hyper-V and the new Microsoft Virtual PC they have finally gotten serious.

OG

Thanks to all that have replied.

I have been fighting issue after issue; part of it and maybe a large part of it is my own ignorance and the rest I am still working on.

I am not familiar with any VM software so I can’t really tell you much about it, just that I am having troubles. I am told by a couple of different Rockwell guys, our local group and tech group that this has been installed using VMWAre but nobody has tried Hyper-V.

This system was suppose to be [For Months] a real physical server running 2003 SP2 Standard Edition just like the other server they have that we work with without issues.
IT switched it because it is company policy and “they won’t know the difference”.
We didn’t learn that this was a virtual machine until late last week I asked if I could grab it to take it back to the office since having to remote into one computer and then using a special key generator that would connect me into another computer and then possibly have to console into yet another computer, I couldn’t always get the console session I need*. This is when we were told the Rest of the story.

I have wore Rockwell’s tech connect out and my hats off to those guys and gals for trying to help. Rockwell doesn’t officially support this type of set-up and I understand that and they have tried to help. Kudos to the tech connect group.

IT was telling me I have all the privileges and rights on the computer that they do but as it turns out we didn’t have rights to start services or add users and who knows what else but now they have given me an virtual image just like to would get from MS but the problems still persist.

If anyone has access to Rockwell products and Hyper-V let me know. I would like to know if it is my ignorance or a software issue. The biggest issue at this time I believe is with FT ViewPoint Admin Services starting.


*I’m not exaggeration that much in how we have to get into there system.


Thanks for letting me vent..Heading to a ribfest with the family.

Edit...Also, hats off to Rockwell for the Live Chat Tech Support. If you guys or gals haven't used it, you should give it a shot the next time you need tech connect and the product is support in chat.

surferb said:

Hyper-V runs on Windows 2008. You mean you're going to run a virtualized Win 2003 server on that?

Click to expand...

But that is the very idea though isn't it. Hyper-V allows you to turn your Win2008 box into several virtual boxes. Each one capable of running whatever operating system you or your software requires.

OG

There is a little more complication, but you should be able to get it working. Where it gets tough/impossible is with certain hardware, like hardware dongles or PCMK cards. You should be fine with Ethernet (even DCOM), except you'll have more configuration (firewall exception rules, etc).

Don't be scared - you'll get it!

surferb said:

Virtualization is ready for the enterprise. It adds redundancy/scalability features (V-Motion on the VMWare side, Hyper-V must have something similar).

Click to expand...

How it can be used for redundancy? can you rely on a single computer with multiple OSs? what happens if that computer fails due to hardware problem.

Reagards.

You can set up 2 physical hosts that run multiple virtual machines. "VMotion" will migrate a running virtual machine from one host to the other in the event of failure. You can also manually move all your (online) virtual hosts to shut down a physical machine for maintenance.

briana banks said:

How it can be used for redundancy? can you rely on a single computer with multiple OSs? what happens if that computer fails due to hardware problem.

Reagards.

Click to expand...

I don't want to speak for Nathan, but in my view it isn't redundancy but rapid recovery that is the key. Since a virtual server is "virtual" it is hardware independent. So in the event of a hardware failure the virtual server can be easily shifted to another physical machine.

OG

Oops...he beat me to the punch!! What he said.

We have an environment running about 20 vPCs across up to 5 physical machines. About 8 of these vPCs are related to the HMI host, and the rest are other devices, as we virtualize our routers, webservers, databases, etc. I say up to 5 physical hosts because the network is monitored for issues by a controller that will start and stop physical hosts as needed. Networking is easy, as you can just connect the physical media to the machine, and then vlan your config from there.

The reliability of the system is far greater then running single physical machines, and the restart time is also way faster, as some physical servers take 5 minutes to reboot as opposed to 30 seconds.

Add in a SAN storage device, and you have the best in service reliability

As for Rockwell products inside a VM, I run RSL5, 500, and 5k inside a XP vm along with RSNetworx, RSLinx, Softlogix, and RSView 32., No issues yet. DCOM configuration is exactly the same as a physical machine, so I dont know what issues that one guy was having. If you need help just ask.

We have 4 Vmware server and ~35 VMs running at any given time. I do all my SCADA testing on a set of images I created. Fix32, iFix, Wonderware, Rockwell everything all work fine so far.

Ditto on the comm card thing, Haven't tried, but i'm pretty sure that an internal Cnet or Dnet card just won't work. Same w/ dongles.
I got around the Cnet thing by using a 1756-ENBT and 1756-CNB in a backplane that just bridges our controlnet into our process network(with a nice firewall sitting just on the ethernet side looking mean at packets).

Well, you can use devices in vSphere, but you would lose availability options. The ENBT/EN2T > CNBT/DNBT option would probably be the best option

Thanks for the replies and letting me know it should be doable.
FT SE appears to be going ok but the FT ViewPoint is another sorry or so it appears. It might be the security setting they have in place but I was allowed to install and work with SE.
They have set me up a VMWare box that I may install all this on and see what happens on that one compared to the Hyper-V machine.

Also, Rockwell called and asked what they could do to help me.
That is very good customer service since they don't "officially" support this type of install.

Thanks,
Bob