{"id":1310,"date":"2012-08-15T19:52:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T19:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2012-08-16T12:31:29","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T12:31:29","slug":"thinmanager-q-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/?p=1310","title":{"rendered":"ThinManager Q & A"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Managing a Municipality<\/strong><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

We recently sat down with Ken Osborne, the SCADA Systems Coordinator for Pinellas County Utilities and discussed what it takes to keep the water flowing for over one million people in the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHow long have you been with the Pinellas County Utilities?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cThirty three years\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat did the system look like 33 years ago?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a system. In about 1995, we installed a VMS based Opto 22 system for all of Pinellas County, which at the time, was four main facilities plus 300 pumps and offsite stations. After Y2K happened, when we saw that our software was not working properly, we started converting over to Wonderware and we completed our first site deployment with ThinManager<\/a> on an upgrade to a Terminal Server environment with Wonderware.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat did ThinManager add that your system had been lacking?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cOriginally, we just had a PC environment, running Wonderware and we had to manage all those PCs while contending with licensing and hard drive problems as well as issues common to a PC environment being in the waste water field.\u00a0 When we made the decision to move to thin clients, we looked at how ThinManager made it easy to manage a secure desktop where people couldn\u2019t leave their HMI screen to go somewhere else.\u00a0 ThinManager software allowed us to have one program running all the time and was easy to manage off one console.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHow many clients do you currently have deployed throughout all of your facilities?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cI have fourty ACP ThinManager clients and three ThinServers\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHow far away are your facilities from each other?”<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cIt is thirty miles from the very end of Pinellas county in Ft. Desoto up to Tarpon Springs, so we service a wide area that runs on a dual microwave healing ring and each area has its own subnet main areas with ThinServers at each facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cCan you explain what the challenges are managing software and hardware in a Water Management system? Does the environment dictate specific needs?\u201d<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cIt does if you have clients in an area where there is a lot of gas and corrosion.\u00a0 You can lose hardware prematurely because of corrosion on the boards as well as lighting strikes and storm conditions.\u00a0 We are now able to put our servers in an area that can\u2019t be touched by the environment and put thin clients out in the field so there is a minimal cost to replace them when failure does occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cBefore changing over to thin clients, if you lost a PC, what kind of time and effort would be required to replace it?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cIt was a lot because first we had to get a new PC, load the HMI software and all the drivers you needed to get going.\u00a0 Then we had to connect it to the network, and copy the application. With a thin client we just have to plug it in, turn it on, configure the IP and it finds the ThinManager software by itself.<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cAfter upgrading to ThinManager ready thin clients, was there an immediate cost savings?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cIt definitely cost less than a work station or a PC.\u00a0 And the ease of deployment makes it much quicker which is great, because time is money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cDo you have a dedicated in house IT department?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cThere is a county IT department, but they just manage the network. We troubleshoot and maintain all of our own clients, servers, and software with a two person team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cSo you have two people who maintain all the water management for an entire county?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cTwo people run all the water and wastewater utilities for Pinellas county\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cAre there any other municipal agencies that you\u2019ve discussed ThinManager with or showed it to who are now considering it as their network management system?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWe get calls from various municipalities throughout the state who want to tour our facilities see what we use and how we have deployed our ThinServers and ThinManager ready thin clients.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cCan you discuss the functionality that ThinManager offers in addition to your HMI?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat we like about it is the ability to control the content being used on those desktops.\u00a0 When an operator goes to use something they are only accessing our HMI.\u00a0 They can\u2019t minimize and go to something else\u2026go browsing the net.\u00a0 It is really closed down to one specific application. There\u2019s no worry that someone is doing the wrong thing on those terminals.\u00a0 So it really offers peace of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cYou are in the process of upgrading to ThinManager 6.0?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat new functionality and applications are you planning on using that you aren\u2019t using with your current version?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to using the Shadowing<\/a> feature so we can have an HMI license that we can shuttle out to a plant so if an operator is working at one site and goes to another he can shadow his terminal and have access to his HMI right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat about Terminal to Terminal Shadowing to allow the operator to be able to move around the plant and access one session from any terminal?”<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cYes, that\u2019s probably one of the nicest features I saw on the new ThinManager software because our plants are so big and the staff may only use one main terminal shadowing the one they use the most and not have to buy a HMI license just for a terminal they might only use once a shift. They can shadow that terminal back at their office which will save us a ton of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHave you looked at using WinTMC to address some of the issues that you have with your mobile clients?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cDefinitely. \u00a0One of the problems we have with the mobile clients is that our field technicians will login to the network from their vehicle using a laptop via an air card and can sometimes log into either the wrong Terminal Server or the wrong application and end up working off of bad data. I envision using the WinTMC <\/a>feature so I can control where they are logging into and make sure they are using the right application. It will save me a ton of time not having to go back to find out what they did and where they might have created a problem by logging into the wrong plant or wrong set of stations.\u00a0 \u00a0Our goal is to be able to effectively and efficiently manage their remote connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWhat kind of Redundancy do you have in place today?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cRight now we have no redundancy as far as the application.\u00a0 We have hardware redundancy with our Stratus Servers and no real failure there has ever happened. But there\u2019s no application redundancy as of right now.\u00a0 Our plan is to add application redundancy so if we lose one terminal server at a facility, we can use the backup located at our central station.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHave you had any major issues over the years of using ThinManager?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cI must say, we never had any problems with it.\u00a0 We use it as a template and duplicate it to all of our sites and it never has let us down.\u201d\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cAre you currently enrolled in COMP Support<\/a>?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cYes we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHave you ever had to call or email with an issue?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cWe have, but not very often.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had to call for help moving the licenses around as needed, and have had a couple of questions regarding some drivers but very rarely have we needed to call for support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cCould you imagine managing your current systems without ThinManager?<\/em><\/p>\n

A –<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cNot using ThinManager to manage my clients throughout the whole system would definitely be very time consuming.\u00a0 Because of the distances between facilities and the unpredictable weather here in Pinellas County, machines constantly go down or need to be rebooted.\u00a0 But that layer of ThinManager software does most of that work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q –<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u201cDo you have any advice you would give to anybody else looking at PCs versus the ThinManager thin client technology?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A \u00a0–<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIf your facility has multiple PCs, and you have the option of going to a Terminal Server with thin clients I would go that direction every time.\u00a0 The ease of maintaining your system will make your life much easier and you can sleep at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Managing a Municipality   We recently sat down with Ken Osborne, the SCADA Systems Coordinator for Pinellas County Utilities and discussed what it takes to keep the water flowing for over one million people in the Tampa Bay area.   Q – \u00a0\u201cHow long have you been with the Pinellas County Utilities?\u201d A – \u00a0\u201cThirty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,59],"tags":[75,111,3,77,30,104],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-real-world-thinmanager","tag-hmi","tag-municipality","tag-thin-client","tag-thin-client-management","tag-thinmanager","tag-wonderware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}