Rockwell FactoryTalk Proxmox Virtualization

[zane797]

I have been trialing a Proxmox based development server for my group but have had no end of troubles with the several instances of VM I have attempted to create and load software on for a FactoryTalk SE application. This generally presents as issues with the FTCommon and FTCommonEX .dll files or a .NET runtime error. It presents in the OS as after installing all software and configuring the directory, we launch V Studio and allows us to select the application type. Once we pick the application type it hard crashes prior to selecting an existing or creating a new application. We've tried VMs running Windows Server 2k16 and 2k19 and Windows 10 Pro. When we followed the same setup steps we normally go through on our old ESXI server and it works immediately. We are running the current crops of VMs using the qemu2 disk format but have tried both Raw and vmdk.

My question is, is anyone successfully running Rockwell FactoryTalk software on Proxmox based VMs and were there any particular hoops to jump through? We spent about a day online with multiple Rockwell reps and have reinstalled/updated many times including updating FactoryTalk Activation Manager and installing the rollup patches. We are specifically testing with FactoryTalk v11 and v13

 

[Ben Pugh]

I haven't used SE, but I have been using a Proxmox VM (Win 10) as a PLC and PanelView programming PC for a few years now without any problems. It has FT View Studio V12, but only the ability to create and edit ME applications is installed.

As a test, I just installed FTView Studio SE v12 in a different Windows 10 VM on the same VM server and successfully opened the InstantFizz_SE sample application. I have no idea why it wouldn't be working for you though.

 

[zane797]

Are you using the stock machine/bios settings? I am playing with using q35 instead of if440fx and virtualizing the ethernet adapter instead of using virtio drivers in case there's a compatibility issue. Also if you wouldn't mind, which version of Proxmox are you using? I am working from the latest 8.1 release. I see this behavior when launching ME applications so it seems my entire application is broken including the parts that seem to work well for you.

 

[Ben Pugh]

My proxmox version is a few years old now, 6.2-4. Attached is a picture of the hardware setup.

 

[zane797]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep playing with it and see if I can sort it out. Could be an issue on Proxmox 8.1 specifically, more testing to follow.

 

[louieboy]

How about using Hyper-V and Nutanix? Thanks for this as i am planning to use proxmox on my future projects.

 

[zane797]

How about using Hyper-V and Nutanix? Thanks for this as i am planning to use proxmox on my future projects.

I had more luck with Proxmox by using either the q35 or i440-fx v7.1 virtual machine, the newer version of i440-fx v8.1 that was the default on Proxmox VE 8.1 had continuous failures regardless of what settings or install methods I followed.