I just wanted to share my Ignition Experience with the Linux Operating System.
For folks who are wondering if Ignition works on Linux, the answer is YES!
I have been implementing production Ignition systems for a few year now. From Ubuntu server 20.04 to 22.04, using on Fedora 29/39, using on Rocky8/9, also using ignition on Ubuntu arm64 version for my Mac M3. I know MacOs is technically a linux hybrid but I have Ignition running on an Apple Server (intel chip) with High Sierra OS. I have not tried it on an Arch distribution but as posted in another thread, I got it working on a Steam Deck with runs a custom arch version of SteamOS.
Long story short, don't hesitate to use Linux and run ignition in Production on Linux!
LXC containers under Proxmox work great w/ Ignition. You can use the .run installer. Since they're system containers, they've got full systemd and everything installs like on a normal Ubuntu VM.
i’m interested on this topic, i want to proposed ignition with linux to my customer, for lower license cost. can you please share, what problems often occur when using ignition with linux that i should aware of?
what is the CONS that my customer should know when use linux ? like PLC Driver, is it works like in windows ?
In my opinion, there are no cons. As an Integrator, I found most shops ran Windows and I would ALWAYS recommend using Linux (however, I could only convert a couple of shops). Now, I’m running RedHat (production), Ubuntu (qa/testing) & use to run CentOS back in the day.
That and other OPC systems like KepServerEX that have to be relied upon to get to other PLC types, equipment etc. Yeah they can be installed on other servers and linked to, but that then kind of negates the licensing costs.
Supposedly, Kepware Edge is the Linux offering that is coming out.
But it has a limited driver scope so far and won’t cover what we need it to cover.
Man I’ve been doing my development in containers and in Linux and was wanting to deploy to production with Ubuntu, but our IT team hasn’t worked with Linux before and wants me to justify the need for Linux over Windows :\
Honestly it wouldn’t be a huge deal, if they want to burn money on Windows licenses that’s on them. Issue is our Ignition licenses are not leased so containers are not a good fit, so the shift to Windows would actually be annoying for me. All my previous jobs used Linux so I was surprised to be stonewalled here about it. Wish me luck on convincing them!
Supporting legacy hardware is the only excuse for Windows on the plant network that I don't count as engineering malpractice.
Is the prevalence of malware crises for Windows versus Linux not sufficient? (I can't think of a single ransomware event that crippled a company in the last decade that wasn't on Windows.)
i think redhat is a good choice, the pricing is affordable.
But not many users are familiar with linux.
integrated it with Microsoft Active Directory is one thing.
but the most important thing that one of my user need to use redundant ignition, with redundant historian which is not supported yet by ignition version 8.3, so i need to figure it out how to use redundant server with HA database in the same server and i read that Linux can do that, because my customer can afford only 2 servers
If your customer can only afford two servers, they cannot afford to use HA. Simple as that.
Run one as Ignition, one as database. When/if they have an availability issue, that will provide the budget requirement to add a hot spare/redundant/loadbalanced system.
Do not mix database and gateway roles on the same server OS, you will make less efficient use of the same amount of server hardware and only cause issues.
This is literally off the shelf with Ubuntu these days, straight onto Entra.
Users don't use server operating systems. Most Ignition developers don't use server operating systems. Only the server admins need to interact with the server OS.
