Multiple Plants in a single Instance of MII

[Former Member]

Hello,

We are currently trying to solve the following problem. We have a production process that is equal in several production sites, and at each plant we have running several machines. Hence we develop a package in MII that fits all plants / machines. Since we have a centralized data center, we do not want to locate the MII Servers at the plant due to several reasons. The goal is to develop a single package and deploy it several times (once for each plant) on a single centralized clustered installation of MII. We need the copies to make the deployment of package updates easier (plant after plant, not all at the same time).

The structure in the MII Workbench should look like this:

-> Server

--> plant_1

---> copy_1_of_package

--> plant_2

---> copy_2_of_package

--> plant_3

---> copy_3_of_package

--> ...

--> plant_n

---> copy_n_of_package

But I see several Problems: If I copy the packages, the paths will be wrong, since they are absolute paths!? Is there a way to work with relative paths? Is it possible in general to manage several plants in a single instance of MII or do we really need a seperate server for each plant?

Kind Regards,

Matthias

We are running Version 12 SP3

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

When using a single MII instance, we tend to deal with multiple plants in the data model. We either to this by using plant as a key in a single database, or a separate database for each plant. We would then run one MII "app" on top.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

thanks for your quick response. You mean we should run only one copy of the package I mentioned and seperate the plants and machines by logic implemented in the package? Well, I think this is critical in case of deploying a new version, since all machines at all sites won't have the system available at the same time. At the moment we do not have things in the system that are needed to go on with production, but we have planned to implement some things that will be indispensable and in this stage we need a clear seperation of the plants to minimize the risk of a simultaneous stand at all plants.

Thanks for your suggestion and best regards,

Matthias

[jcgood25 · Accepted solution]

It sounds to me like there may be more justification for a distributed server approach than your centralized server intentions. I would be more curious as to your reasons for your statement: "we do not want to locate the MII Servers at the plant due to several reasons". If the data sources are at the plants, then it makes even more sense that the production MII servers should be there as well.

Regards,

Jeremy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeremy,

there are data sources located at the plant (the historian), and other data sources are located in the data center (ERP, warehouse management). But back to my original question: Is it possible to run several plants in a single installation of MII, i.e., is MII multi-client capable?

Regards,

Matthias

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

There are ways to call transactions as web services dynamically thru the runner. I don't know what impact this would have on you're development time and application performance.This would solve your dynamic path issue but I can't recommend it. If you want to run plants on differnt versions of an app without changing the naming, you will have to run separate instances of MII. If you want to run different versions of an app with different naming on the same instance youre gonna have to bite the bullet and change the names everywhere or do crazy dynamic development tricks.