System Requirements

Hello Julio D,

You wrote:

I have a question for the system requirements for a server running Indusoft Control Room with 8 thin clients. There will 8 compactlogix total tag will be 7200 (around 900 per processor ), 8 alarms sheets with 32 alarms per sheet (256 total alarms), 8 different trend of 10 tags per Trend.

I was thinking for 2GB of ram per client plus 16GB for Win 2008 Server so a total of 32GB, is that two much for RAM.

It is a little difficult to calculate or even estimate exact hardware requirements to run any given application on InduSoft Web Studio. This is due to the fact that IWS will run extremely efficiently on even the smallest embedded OS such as Win 7 Standard Embedded and a modest flat panel PC platform. Generally speaking, to answer your question about tag requirements, tag memory requirements are based on the length of the tag name and the data that will be contained in them, strings being the longest. Additionally, various processes like I/O to the database (i.e., Trends) are more based on processor speed rather than RAM requirements. In regard to the I/O to the CompactLogix, 900 per processor should also not be any problem.

A rule of thumb is that whatever OS you are using, in this case, 2008 Server with 16 Gig of RAM, the MS requirements for the processor and RAM will be sufficient to run any InduSoft application until you get to more than perhaps, 50,000 to 100,000 tags or greater, and your application having a lot of graphical intensive processes going on within a lot of scripts. Additionally, if you are hosting a SQL Server on the server machine and have many SQL queries and transactions concurrently going on, this can also affect machine performance and/or RAM requirements somewhat. Running the thin clients will not greatly affect machine performance or the need for larger RAM requirements. You can monitor your machine performance with "Performance Monitor" and see Processor and RAM usage, and add additional RAM as needed if you are running near 80% utilization, however it seems, based on your initial description of the project, that this additional RAM will likely not be needed.

I modified our PCDemo application to include some bottling/corking/capping line video simulations in the Vintner Section. These simulations intentionally use the Screen Script (usually not recommended for intensive continuous graphical processes - see Tech Note below) and also have ramping which runs continually in the Simulation Script Task for the line speed adjustments. If you want to download the application or see how it operates on your machine, please go here:

http://www.indusoft.com/blog/2013/02/20/indusoft-web-studio-in-farm-automation-and-food-and-beverage-applications/

The reason I am using this as an example is to demonstrate what specific requirements are needed for the machine and also how a machine may react when running continuous processes within various script containers. I developed this and ran the application on a Win 7 x64 Parallels VM on a MacBook Pro, assigning only 2 of the 8 available processors to the VM, and 2 Gig of the available 16 Gig of the machine RAM to it. Additionally the machine has the VM installed on the main machine disk, which is an SSD, and this is probably the biggest boost to speed and throughput that is noticible. There are about 2000 tags in the project, several in trends and batch processes to an external database, but none in I/O.

I initially put the processes that are in the Bottling/Corking/Capping Production Line screen script into the Simulation Script Task, and due to the way and manner that the Script Task is serviced, the performance of the ramping functions was about 10% - 20% more sluggish than in the current version of it. This and the I/O that you intend to use may be affected for the same reasons, depending on how you write your scripts and use the various Worksheets.

Please review this Tech Note, "Internal Tasks" available here:

http://www.indusoft.com/Documentation/Technical-Notes?EntryId=119&Command=Core_Download

in order to more fully understand the implications and interactions of using various scripts and graphical objects along with various I/O and Tasks, like the Math() Function along with the Scheduler task/worksheet. Paying careful attention during development to creating an efficient application will greatly affect how it operates, more than adding additional RAM will.

Richard Clark
Indusoft TMS

Hello Julio D,

You wrote:

I have a question for the system requirements for a server running Indusoft Control Room with 8 thin clients. There will 8 compactlogix total tag will be 7200 (around 900 per processor ), 8 alarms sheets with 32 alarms per sheet (256 total alarms), 8 different trend of 10 tags per Trend.

I was thinking for 2GB of ram per client plus 16GB for Win 2008 Server so a total of 32GB, is that two much for RAM.

It is a little difficult to calculate or even estimate exact hardware requirements to run any given application on InduSoft Web Studio. This is due to the fact that IWS will run extremely efficiently on even the smallest embedded OS such as Win 7 Standard Embedded and a modest flat panel PC platform. Generally speaking, to answer your question about tag requirements, tag memory requirements are based on the length of the tag name and the data that will be contained in them, strings being the longest. Additionally, various processes like I/O to the database (i.e., Trends) are more based on processor speed rather than RAM requirements. In regard to the I/O to the CompactLogix, 900 per processor should also not be any problem.

A rule of thumb is that whatever OS you are using, in this case, 2008 Server with 16 Gig of RAM, the MS requirements for the processor and RAM will be sufficient to run any InduSoft application until you get to more than perhaps, 50,000 to 100,000 tags or greater, and your application having a lot of graphical intensive processes going on within a lot of scripts. Additionally, if you are hosting a SQL Server on the server machine and have many SQL queries and transactions concurrently going on, this can also affect machine performance and/or RAM requirements somewhat. Running the thin clients will not greatly affect machine performance or the need for larger RAM requirements. You can monitor your machine performance with "Performance Monitor" and see Processor and RAM usage, and add additional RAM as needed if you are running near 80% utilization, however it seems, based on your initial description of the project, that this additional RAM will likely not be needed.

I modified our PCDemo application to include some bottling/corking/capping line video simulations in the Vintner Section. These simulations intentionally use the Screen Script (usually not recommended for intensive continuous graphical processes - see Tech Note below) and also have ramping which runs continually in the Simulation Script Task for the line speed adjustments. If you want to download the application or see how it operates on your machine, please go here:

http://www.indusoft.com/blog/2013/02/20/indusoft-web-studio-in-farm-automation-and-food-and-beverage-applications/

The reason I am using this as an example is to demonstrate what specific requirements are needed for the machine and also how a machine may react when running continuous processes within various script containers. I developed this and ran the application on a Win 7 x64 Parallels VM on a MacBook Pro, assigning only 2 of the 8 available processors to the VM, and 2 Gig of the available 16 Gig of the machine RAM to it. Additionally the machine has the VM installed on the main machine disk, which is an SSD, and this is probably the biggest boost to speed and throughput that is noticible. There are about 2000 tags in the project, several in trends and batch processes to an external database, but none in I/O.

I initially put the processes that are in the Bottling/Corking/Capping Production Line screen script into the Simulation Script Task, and due to the way and manner that the Script Task is serviced, the performance of the ramping functions was about 10% - 20% more sluggish than in the current version of it. This and the I/O that you intend to use may be affected for the same reasons, depending on how you write your scripts and use the various Worksheets.

Please review this Tech Note, "Internal Tasks" available here:

http://www.indusoft.com/Documentation/Technical-Notes?EntryId=119&Command=Core_Download

in order to more fully understand the implications and interactions of using various scripts and graphical objects along with various I/O and Tasks, like the Math() Function along with the Scheduler task/worksheet. Paying careful attention during development to creating an efficient application will greatly affect how it operates, more than adding additional RAM will.

Richard Clark
Indusoft TMS