Advice on upgrading local projects to run from a server

Hi folks,

I'm just looking for some advice on the above please. Most of our plants run on RSLogix/RS Studio with Wonderware or FTView and they are all ran locally from the workstations in each plant. Lately we've been thinking that now might be the time to upgrade and have everything running from a server but I'm trying to find a way to do this without bringing people in and spending a fortune. There will be no avoiding the cost of the infrastructure but if we can deploy it in house that would be great.

Does anyone have any thoughts on ways we could go about implementing this? The main reason for wanting to do it is to be able to make changes on a master project and have that pushed to the client instead of having to take over the operators machine to make a change. Another reason is that to be able to look at the historical data we would again have to take over a workstation and flick back through the trends or whatever. Ideally having a database hosted on a server would enable us to query it without having to interrupt anything.

If you have something similar in your site I'd love to know the details of your set up, how many servers do you have, what software do you use for it, how many plants do you run from the servers, do you have reports running from the server as well and maybe a rough estimation of the time & cost involved in setting your system up.

One way would be to have a virtual machine hosted on a server and just run that vm from the operator workstation but I wouldn't be able to make changes to it without it affecting the plant, at least I don't think so anyway. This is where, hopefully, you come in

When it comes to servers, thin clients and all that I'm aware of them but have not ever worked with/implemented them so any help is, as always, greatly appreciated. That's the gist of it but if you need more information let me know.

Thanks,

Darren

I'm trying to find a way to do this without bringing people in and spending a fortune

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I don't pretend to konw anything about you situation Darren but this is so very typical of British Companies, the budget for this kind engineering is always small but they expect "you" the engineers and techs to be fully up to speed with site-wide and enterprise SCADA and IIOT.

It’s the same mindset that the inefficient 50year old machine, still works so there no point in any investment.

Darren. A few days of assistance from an integrator won’t cost you "a fortune" and you may end up with something you didn't consider and is cost effective both financially and your time.

Having said that, consider a site wide SCADA, with local edge clients, you will have all the benefits you seek and you will have all your info in one place and its available for other uses such a OEE, MES, TEEP etc. It can be installed and then slowly migrated to each device.

You can do this! It isn't difficult.

Create a new FT View SE Network application. After doing that, you must manually add the HMI Server. When you do that, you can import your local SE HMI Server. There is an option for this. It is pretty quick and easy.

You must also manually create the RSLinx Enterprise (now called FactoryTalk Linx) Data Server. Unfortunately there is no import for this. So you will need to create the Device Shortcut with the exact same name as what was used in the local application. The HMI and Data Server are created automatically in a local application, but in network applications they are created manually.

Once you do this, you can make changes for an engineering station while the operator is using the system.

OG

You could enable Network Application Development on your WonderWare HMIs as well.

Chris Taylor said:

I don't pretend to konw anything about you situation Darren but this is so very typical of British Companies, the budget for this kind engineering is always small but they expect "you" the engineers and techs to be fully up to speed with site-wide and enterprise SCADA and IIOT.

It’s the same mindset that the inefficient 50year old machine, still works so there no point in any investment.

Darren. A few days of assistance from an integrator won’t cost you "a fortune" and you may end up with something you didn't consider and is cost effective both financially and your time.

Having said that, consider a site wide SCADA, with local edge clients, you will have all the benefits you seek and you will have all your info in one place and its available for other uses such a OEE, MES, TEEP etc. It can be installed and then slowly migrated to each device.

Click to expand...

There is money out there at the minute though - sure there are plenty of the OPs (no disrespect) companies that want a plant wide scada in exchange for a pasty and a coffee, but they are usually best avoided. As said, a couple of days for an SI onsite to advise, is worth it's weight.

For whatever reason I had not considered creating a FTView Network application. I'll look into that, thanks Operaghost. Virtualisation was the first thing I thought of but that makes much more sense.

Bit_Bucket_07 again, I didn't think of that so thanks for your help. I've not done this before but I'm reading up on it now.

I didn't mean that my company wasn't willing to spend money either but I can see how you might think that based on my initial post. It's just that cheaper solutions have a better chance of being approved than something expensive so I'm just looking for a few different solutions to present. I'm not adverse to getting people in but we do prefer keeping knowledge in house if possible. We're not very busy right now either so I'm happy to have something new to work on

Many thanks for the suggestions so far! I have plenty food for thought but any other suggestions are welcomed too

My advice would be to convert each workstation into a Virtual Machine and then use Thin Manager to deploy all of these from a central server.

Thin Manager will automatically rebuild any failed thin clients in the field and PC's you currently have at each station could be used as thin clients until you wanted to upgrade to thin client hardware which would save some money.

For your central server if your budget supports it you may want to look at Stratus servers for ultimate reliability.