I am currently working on a system that we are planning on using Vision, Perspective, the Sepasoft OEE module, and a few other modules. One of the desired features is to have a backup/redundant server located on the plant network in case connection to the server that is talking across a firewall goes down. This backup only needs to display the Vision client with real time information, therefore, a full redundant gateway with all of the modules is overkill.
I am looking for an economical way to have a backup of the Vision client real time data; preferably the backup won’t require making changes twice to keep in sync with the main gateway project.
Welcome! Search for “local client fallback”
IA will also split the licence into front-end/back-end gateways, but if you’re DB module is on the one that goes down it won’t be real time
Thanks for the suggestion.
A couple questions for local client fallback.
Would updates to the main gateway require copying the same changes to second gateway being used as the local client?
It seems this is meant for the local machine, does this mean this would only work for one client machine?
I’ve never deployed it just know it exists…
If you're going the Local Client Fallback approach, then yes.
It sounds like you looked into the feature some, so I apologize if this is info you already have, but LCF involves having an installation of Ignition at each client machine. The idea being that in cases where the client machine loses communication with the main Ignition server, the vision client running on the client machine can switch over to a local Ignition installation.
So yeah, you'd need to implement this on each machine where you'd want this functionality, and project changes would need to be manually moved over to each machine (technically the Enterprise Administration Module could help here, but that wasn't one of the modules you mentioned in your first post).
That being said, I'm not certain if LCF is what you're looking for. In your first post:
What you're describing there is Ignition Redundancy, where you have a "master" Ignition server, and a "backup" server. If there's a communication problem between the master and vision client, the client will switch over to the backup server. Redundancy does handle project changes inherently: the backup server automatically synchronizes with the master, so you'd only ever develop on the master. It looks like there's a discount for backup licenses (half of the master), so this might be the more economical solution when compared to LCF, depending on the number of client machines.
The downside to this approach is the firewall situation you mentioned. If the master and backup servers are on one side of the firewall, while the client machines are on the other, then redundancy doesn't help too much here, and you'll probably want to look closer at the LCF option.
Hopefully I didn't muddy the waters too much. It might be worth reaching out to your account rep and see if they can run some different options by you (I'm not part of the sales group, so my knowledge of cost is based on our pricing page).
Thanks for the information.
Since we will have 10+ clients on the plant floor, I believe the functionality desired for the project is closer to the redundancy you described, however, it is a tough sell to pay even the reduced cost to license a backup server with all the modules we are using when the only requirement for the backup is to have realtime visibility for Vision clients.
Redundancy for the Sepasoft OEE module alone will be more than $10,000, when the use case is for a situation where we would have lost connection to the database server, and therefore cannot use the functionality of the module.
Perhaps a hybrid then whereby you split the license (modules), not so much back-end/front-end but critical up-time/non-critical and apply redundancy to the critical only… if that’s even possible from IA’s licensing perspective (no pun intended!).
Although of course, that will incur additional server/VM requirements.
Edge Panel licenses for local client fallback might be an option. You really should talk to a sales rep; I’m sure they’d be willing to help figure out your best option.