Wonderware Licensing and Virtualization

[sparkie]

I was recently called to a customer's plant where a roof had leaked all over their two Wonderware production computers. We managed to save them but they are wanting to solidify those systems.

This control room is isolated from the rest of the plant so I'm thinking we can combine these two 10-year old computers into one machine using virtualization and make it much easier to set the system back up in the form of catastrophic system failure. Since this system is isolated there will not be a need to upgrade the actual OS and Wonderware versions for a long time, so I see no need to try and sell them on a complete update.

Should the license move over just fine if I do a clone of these drives?

 

[Paullys50]

Yes it should. I've used VMWare player (not free for commercial use) in the past to run Wonderware projects. Granted they were setup as NAD so just the clients were virtualized, as long as you aren't using terminal services or changing the WW architecture at all.

 

[sparkie]

Thanks a lot, just wanted to get that piece of information before I quoted the project. The company (my former employer) already has the software and wants to buy the hardware on their own, which is fine with me. I'll just be doing the work.

 

[Saffa]

As long as you have the wwsuit.lic file, no problems. Can be copied off the existing machine if need be.

 

[NetNathan]

As long as you have the wwsuit.lic file, no problems. Can be copied off the existing machine if need be.

I commonly rename the wwsuite.lic or ArchestrA.lic file to recognize it (and also keeping as list of incense numbers in the job file).
My development file is named Dev-ArchestrA.lic.
Customer runtime license is named "Customer Job No"_RT_Archestra.lic (you can also use "Equipment No_RT_ArchestrA.lic).

Then when you use the license utility to install licenses and select the renamed license....The license automatically renames the license to ArchestrA.lic when it puts it in the license directory.

 

[sparkie]

So say I wanted to make changes to a WonderWare program. I would simply copy over a developer's license file and do the changes, save them and then remove it from the machine once I was done?

 

[NetNathan]

So say I wanted to make changes to a WonderWare program. I would simply copy over a developer's license file and do the changes, save them and then remove it from the machine once I was done?

You do not want to copy license manually....use the "License Utility" to do it.
Install Dev license....edit.....and then install RT license to "overwrite" existing Dev license.
The Development License and/or Runtime License can be from a later version. Example...You can use a 10.0 license on version 9 application.