Hello,
I just discovered Ignition this week and from what I’ve read so far it looks like a great product. I’ve yet to install and try to software but I will soon. I have a couple of questions…
One more…
How would Ignition, as a whole, perform on a system with lets say anywhere from 9000 I/O to 40,000 I/O points. What is the maximum number of tags it supports?
Thank you!
[quote=“tranh2”]Hello,
I have a redundant Ignition system in a VMWare environment that’s been running flawlessly for the last 4 years.
For disaster recovery, I make regular backups of my Ignition configuration and the SQL server (which runs on yet another VMWare machine).
My systems currently collects data from a little over 4000 I/O points.
It is a GREAT system
C
Hey tranh2,
Welcome to the forum!
Ignition works very well in a virtualized environment. I have redundant servers running Windows Server 2008. Both servers are VM's in a cloud facility, the servers are not on site. The only thing I would keep in mind with the cloud stuff is communication latency, you may not be able to get very fast (200ms or below) tag reads.
Ignition itself has configurable gateway backups, meaning that you can back up your entire gateway (projects, tags, etc...) daily if you want to. I have mine set up to backup every day at 1 am for example. As far as disaster recovery for data that is completely up to what database software you are using. Ignition does not store any data itself, everything is stored in a SQL database, so you can set that up however you want.
Shouldn't be a problem. I have about 4,000 tags and I have never had a problem with Ignition being able to keep up. I've heard of people having upwards of 100,000 tags on very large systems. It's mostly dependent on the hardware you are running the servers on. If you will be running the servers on VMs then it wouldn't be hard to up the RAM or number of CPU's on the fly if you do run into issues.
Hopefully that helps, I'm sure others will chime in with their own experience as well!
Awesome thanks guys…I have some more questions
I have some more questions. How is multi-monitor implemented? Let say I have four monitors and I just want each to display some different screen. Is it just multiple browsers pointing to the different graphic screens on each monitor?
Have you guys noticed any performance issues during long term use like lag or slow down of server/clients where you require reboots? What about stability? From my understanding the Ignition system is like an All-In-One node where data acquisition server, historian, developing environment etc. is all in one machine. Can Ignition be setup to have separate VM’s or Servers acting as DA Servers, Historians etc?
I have a colleague that mentioned that he looked into the SQLBridge and he needed to purchase an SQLBridge for every PLC he had…is that correct? Or is that incorrect?
Thanks!
Having to purchase a separate SQLBridge for every PLC is ridiculous and untrue. A single SQLBridge can log data for any number of PLCs.
ignition is licensed by the server, not the device/windows/tagcount. I think there are some licenses that limit the client count for a reduced price, but other than that or some special mes licensing, you arent limited by devices/tags/windows.
as far as reliability, ignition has been extremely reliable for us. its not uncommon for us to go 6 or more months before having to stop the ignition service, and more often than not that was due to doing an upgrade or because of other software causing an issue.
we have quite a few different systems ranging from 1000 to 80k tags.
Thanks again for the feedback guys.
diat150 - how many physical I/O points does that tag count translate to for youruse specifically? Digital or analog?
nmudge/All - I’ve managed to read the system architecture section of the user manual. I came across the SQLBridge section and from my understanding it is only required if you want a OPC-UA server at a remote site with Store & Forward capabilities. It this correct?
With respect to the above comment and how Ignition describes the modules, it looks like the OPC-UA server can be installed on a dedicated machine acting as a type of DAServer?
Again…Any Multimonitor users out there?
I appreciate the clarifications guys. I come from a Rockwell, iFix, Wonderware, System Platform background and these are all items of concern I’ve come across with those software packages. I’m predominantly using System Platform now which I feel is the best of the bunch but still far from being a great package. After reading and looking into Ignition the software seems to have a very bright future…
I work with diat150.
The 80k tags that diat150 references would be all physical (coming from an OPC server). Most of the points are analog. We have another client that has increased their tag count to almost twice that and still growing. There are no limits to Ignition and no future costs for more tags. The only limits I can think of are your hardware (or virtualized hardware) and your bandwidth.