Re: [foxboro] Upgrading Foxboro AW from P91, (Dell 2800), to P91, (Dell 2900), 2003 Server

  • From: "Ken Heywood" <KHeywood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:29:58 -0500

 
 
The "restore anywhere" routines look good on the sales bulletins, but
then read the caveats in the installation manual. It's not so simple
anymore.

Unfortunately, the Foxboro's option of testing and supporting only
certain PC configurations ended many years ago in the early days of I/A
with the Personal Workstation (PW) systems. There were several good
reasons why these had longevity problems, but they all boil down to one
undeniable truth: customers did not want to pay $5000 for $1995 personal
computer hardware.

Believe it or not, Foxboro had problems with COTS computers back in the
1970s. They sold FOX2 process computers based upon the DEC PDP/11. They
had the same problems as today: OEM obsolescence. As a result, they
started building their own in the form of FOX3 and later FOX300 and
Multistation. Custom built computers are almost cost prohibitive now,
considering PC competition.

About the only way this "finicky" hardware issue will go away is to
either use a VM layer or an operating system that really hides hardware
specifics. 

Let's face it; the hardware/software upgrade/obsolescence issues keep
the process engineering department busy.

You can also keep your existing Sun boxes. There are plenty of parts and
even whole machines available. 


 
 
Thank you,

Ken Heywood
Calibration Laboratory Manager

401 Industrial Drive
Plymouth MI 48170
http://www.processcontrolservices.com
KHeywood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Telephone: 734-453-0620
Facsimile: 734-453-6008
Wireless: 508-241-2040
PCS means Providing Customer Satisfaction
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROCESS CONTROL SERVICES, INC. DISCLAIMER
This message (and any associated files) is intended only for the use of the 
individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that 
is confidential, subject to copyright or constitutes a trade secret. If you are 
not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, 
copying or distribution of this message, or files associated with this message, 
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please 
notify PCS immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your 
computer. Messages sent to and from PCS may be monitored.

Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as 
information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or 
incomplete, or contain viruses. Therefore, we do not accept responsibility for 
any errors or omissions that are present in this message, or any attachment, 
that have arisen as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is 
required, please request a hard-copy version. Any views or opinions presented 
are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of PCS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Corey R Clingo
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 11:20 AM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Upgrading Foxboro AW from P91, (Dell 2800), to
P91, (Dell 2900), 2003 Server

I can't imagine that those "restore anywhere" claims hold up in any but 
the simplest of situations.  Windows is so finicky about hardware that
if 
you put in a box that's different in any significant way, you are 
seemingly likely to have problems.

In light of that, I wonder if Foxboro or any other DCS vendor has
thought 
about ways to minimize the pain they (and their customers) endure at the

hands of COTS computer vendors and Microsoft (I'll leave the "ditch 
Windows" argument alone for the moment).  Maybe run on a bare-metal 
virtualization layer, a la VMware ESX.  Or decouple themselves from the 
hardware, a la PLC vendors.


They can still test on certain PC configurations, and only support
those, 
but there have to be some gains in doing something along these lines.
For 
our Allen-Bradley setup, we can take a newly-installed Windows box, 
install the A-B apps, copy over a few config files, and we're good to
go. 
No commits, no special ethernet drivers, no piles of registry edits.  As

long as you meet some basic hardware specs there is a very good chance
it 
will work.


Corey





"Boulay, Russ" <russ.boulay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
02/09/2009 08:24 PM
Please respond to
foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


To
<foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc

Subject
Re: [foxboro] Upgrading Foxboro AW from P91, (Dell 2800), to P91, (Dell 
2900), 2003 Server






Tom,

In the case stated below, you will have to feel the pain.
Symantec like Acronis or other similar packages has a "Restore Anywhere"
feature. However, "Restore Anywhere" works great on baseline Operating
Systems...like XP or Server 2003 barebones with applications on top.
However, dissimilar hardware requires the pertinent drivers.
That includes motherboards..video, ethernet etc.
New offerings of hardware are not on Microsoft plug and play list.
So after loading an image from an older box onto a newer box next
subsequent bootup will start prompting for specific driver CD's ..etc
that may have shipped with the machine. That's with just OS on new
equipment.

The complexity of I/A and the need to bind hardware to the I/A
application causes issues. 
The 2800 used PCI ethernet to communicate to Mesh.
The 2900 uses PCIe (express) to communicate to Mesh.

If you restore the 2800 backup image onto a 2900, the drivers for PCIe
won't exist.
If you load the drivers new, the ethernet cfg. gets initialized..thus
unbinding I/A from the network interface. There is no way to re-bind I/A
to ethernet interfaces except during day0 install as that is when the
virtual mini-port gets created and dual binded to the two ethernet fiber
cards.

So your best approach:
Dell Restore New box to manufacturing image.
Day0 commit to create ethernet bindings and establish I/A in registry.
Then must load any applications like AIM, IACC  etc. so they can get
 



 
 
_______________________________________________________________________
This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process
Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at
your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html
 
foxboro mailing list:             //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro
to subscribe:         mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=join
to unsubscribe:      mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=leave
 

 
 
_______________________________________________________________________
This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process
Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at
your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html
 
foxboro mailing list:             //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro
to subscribe:         mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=join
to unsubscribe:      mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=leave

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. foxboro
  3. Archive
  4. 02-2009