Our team is in the process finalizing how our new system will be developed. One question that has been a debate recently is the need for the EAM module. Information to know about our system is as follows:
Roughly 65k tags
500 devices
Planning on using 4 I/O servers
Main Project server with redundancy
Historian Server running SQL
Then a cloud hosted Server for Remote Access
Please keep in mind these are virtual servers.
When I initially had conversations with Inductive, they recommended using the EAM as it provided a few features that made life easier. I am for using the EAM module, but I need some more information to validate my points.
From reading through two sections in the 8.1 manual it provides health monitoring of the servers. Shows gateway versions and allows you to update everything at once. Allows automated backups which I believe can be configured with out the EAM, but does it do the Project as well? There were some useful alarms that could be set up in relation to server performance from what I could tell.
So, if I could get some feedback on pros and cons on this Module that would be very helpful. Any real-world use scenarios would be very helpful. Also, if you don't think it is necessary let me know why.
You have 500 Devices?
What kind of devices?
A server run everything? Where are all these devices located?
What if the local device lose connection to the server?
EAM is great, if you also add Edge Gateway with sync license to local sites, you can have real redundancy.
Having 2 servers is only redundancy to the server, having Edge Gateway at different remote sites is fallback redundancy for the site.
Seems a bit much for only 65k tags. What kind of update rates are involved here?
I would expect you to want the redundancy on the I/O server(s) before anything else. That's where historization is critical.
If you can simplify to one redundant I/O server, one local UI server, and one remote UI server, I probably wouldn't bother with EAM. (If the local UI is Vision, I'd keep it in the I/O server(s).)
Probably not a good idea for I/O servers if any native PLC protocols are involved. Unless you take care to not overcommit CPU and memory on them, and don't let other VMs steal their idle time. (All the major commercial hypervisors default to stealing idle time. )
Maybe I should have stated earlier that our current Wonderware v2017 system is setup across 4 virtual servers in our companies server farm. The four I/O servers are over kill we know but we have a specific reason for doing it this way, basically its four different divisions coming together in one project. We don't have an issue with our 28K tags going our tag server now. We are anticipating growth of our system as well as combining with another system on our campus during this project. So future proofing is in the back of our minds with the amount of time and IT hoops we have to jump through on this. We are also going with perspective. The 500 devices are PLCs, and HVAC systems. The devices are spread out across our campus. All of these devices and servers live on the same network.
On your campus, that is like one site maybe with multiple locations.
You need to find out what devices need to run independently.
Most servers are virtual servers, because it is easy to update, backup, snapshot. Multiple servers on one hardware consume less power, also less space.
If your redundant servers(hardware) are in the same server room, even if you have dual network line, separate switches, dual UPS and dual power supplies, it is still not really redundant, if is flooded or on fire, your critical device could end up with no interface(Ignition) and data logging.
Just a thought.
If you're not sure and don't have to decide ahead, try EAM in resettable trial mode to see what it can do for you. If you use it enough for resetting trial mode on all servers before using it to be a pain, buy it.
Yes, it's a large area with multiple manufacturing plants all creating different products. Our team is in charge of the actual buildings. So it's more of a building automation system, or campus automation system. We monitor various utilities and building conditions with this system. For most of the systems it doesn't really matter too much if there is a few data drops here and there. Overall we don't have any problems except with a few HVAC systems that use backnet which isn't a big deal.
Mainly we are wanting to know if there is any real world knowledge out there if the EAM module provides some valuable tools which I believe it does. Seems to me that all the logs and alarms of the actual server information would be invaluable in a troubleshooting should something go wrong.
Are update rate would be 6 seconds. Yes its overkill for 65k tags, however, we anticipate this system growing rather quickly. The tag count could easily double in a few years so we would like to future proof as much as we can. We have to do all the groundwork to get our current system swapped over first. I know just my team alone is going to try to use ignition for at least one maybe two other projects. Another group would like to build a machine monitoring system.
From what I have read it seems like the EAM provides some useful server monitoring that could be visualized on a dashboard. It can also have alarms set up to let us know if a server has an issue. I am clearly not an ignition expert but was hoping to get some feedback from others who have used this product rather than take the first persons word. You know that trust but verify theory...
The way we are wanting our system to work for various reasons is setup specifically this way. Edge was talked about in our initial discussion but then proved to not be really what we need for our system. At this point in our process the architecture is agreed upon. While cost always plays into the EAM module is a drop in the bucket by comparison. Thank you for cost savings viewpoint though.
Mainly I am seeking the usefulness and features that other have used with this module. Like the server monitor capabilities with alarming, and how well it works. It says automatic backups of the gateway with curtailment, does this feature work well or can it be accomplished some other way. Is there a way to back up the project automatically with this even though it wasn't mentioned? Can project updates be sent to the cloud server without the EAM?
After a lot of discussion we ended up getting the EAM module, our I/O servers are edge servers for store and forward. Yes, we probably didn't need the number of I/O servers which I know there was some questions about but that was a business decision made because large company accounting. Our main project server is not redundant, but we have a few enterprise solutions that we have made that not necessary.
Overall, the project is going well, and Ignition is proving to be a great SCADA system with the number of customizable features. We are adding other things to the project just because we have the ability pull the data into Ignition, making it a one stop shop for our managers down to our techs.
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