I wanted to share just in case other’s were having same type of problem!
We run our Ignition server on a dedicated computer on it’s own private network, using Windows 10.
Some of the things I was not aware of with Windows 10. The “Task Scheduler” has 100’s of task scheduled to run at various times for keeping things updated. (I understand this!) The problems comes when one of the updates all of a sudden needs to reboot the computer, this was causing a problem for me because it was interrupting some of my “Transaction Group” writes to a SQL Database.
So what was happing is my TREND graphs that was pulling data back from the SQL Database would have a “BLANK” spot on the graph which was due to the reboot (a missed data write) for that time spot.
I tried searching the Task Scheduler and changing some of the times the updates were happing, but there is just to many and since I’m not an expert computer/windows tech, I was afraid to changed the ones I knew nothing about.
So my work around was - after finally seeing the pattern (which was always the same time but at various days apart). I setup a “Hard Time Trigger” for the Transaction Groups that were effected to write data around the update/reboot timeframe. This has corrected my problem.
I assume the reason for using Win10Pro as a Server OS is due to the cost of MS Server20XY ££££.
An Onlogic IPC can be purchased off the shelf or customised/made to order, and they will install both Linux and Ignition. If you are apprehensive of the learning curve of the different environment, this can reduce this factor.
I get mine with Auto-PowerOn option pre-configured and generally install Linux/Ignition/SQL myself.
With the Auto Power on, if there is a power loss (bear in mind Server should be on UPS circuit), they will autoboot back into the runtime, and with some tweaks to install setup, for Clients I have mine set to auto-login and start Ignition in a Kiosk style mode. With some further tweaks, you can prevent the operators from exiting to the desktop and mucking around at 2 AM.
With the fanless IPC option, there is no maintenance requirement for dust removal. You can also get models with 2.5" Caddy’s which enable quick drive swap out. Again for a server, you should be running some form of RAID.
For a Server setup, it is best practice to have dedicated architecture, splitting Ignition and SQL into their own resource environments.
High availability systems should strongly consider redundancy on both Ignition and SQL machines.
