This lesson is part of the Versioning in Ignition course. You can browse the rest of the lessons below.

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LESSON

Production and Development Server

Description

Once a project is complete and in production, it is a good idea to have a separate development server for future changes. Learn how to set up a production and a development environment.

Video recorded using: Ignition 7.7

Transcript

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[00:00] Once you complete your ignition project and have in production, it is a good idea to have a separate ignition development server for making future changes. That way, the changes won't affect the platform and can be completely tested before rolling out to the production environment. It is also nice to have a development server to perform any ignition upgrades on. That way, any problems can be addressed before upgrading the production environment. There are a few things to take into consideration though when having a production and development server. First, the development server should have it's own PLCs and SQL databases as depicted here. The production server will go against the live PLCs and live databases. The development server will go against it's own development PLCs and development databases. You don't want the development server to point directly to the live PLCs since it's possible to accidentally ride values down the PLC that could turn on or off machines. You also don't want to point to the production database either, to avoid any duplication of data. Secondly, the development ignition server doesn't have to be licensed. You can run the ignition server in the two hour trial mode. Despite being in the trial mode, everything you configure can be backed up and moved to the production server without any problem. Third, you should never move a daily backup from the development server to the production server. The development server will be pointing to the development PLCs and the development databases. So if you move the gateway backup, those connections will be saved, and restored on the production server which is bad since the production server should be pointing to the live PLCs and live databases. Instead, you should back up individual projects and tag separately, and move them to the production server. Ignitions projects use various tags and database connections but only by name so the development server and production server will have the same PLC names and database names but behind the scenes they will point to different places such as different IP addresses. You can't just back up and restore the ignition project though. The project contains all the windows and templates but it does not contain any tags or settings you configure in the ignition gateway. You have to back up tags separately and move them to the production server and you have to keep track of any changes made to these settings on the ignition gateway and perform the same changes on the production server. So there's a little bit to manage, when you have a production environment and a development environment. But in the long run, you'll save a lot of time and headache when new development changes or upgrades to ignition need to be done.

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