{"id":1341,"date":"2012-08-22T13:56:07","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T13:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2012-10-02T19:39:24","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T19:39:24","slug":"monthly-integrator-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/?p=1341","title":{"rendered":"Monthly Integrator Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stacking up the Benefits:\u00a0 ThinManager and Rockwell Automation<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For nearly thirty years, ESE, Inc, the Engineering Solutions Experts<\/a>, has seen continuous growth in plant automation engineering.\u00a0 Headquartered in Marshfield, Wisconsin, ESE specializes in Rockwell solutions for global food and beverage manufacturers. Yet, after years of providing support and upgrades, it became apparent that there was a missing piece to the puzzle.\u00a0 That piece turned out to be ThinManager<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Contacted by a major cheese processing plant in California, ESE was brought in to upgrade their existing processes with a combination of modern hardware and a Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk View SE<\/a> distributed SCADA system.\u00a0 They replaced the older PanelView terminals\u00a0that were on the factory floor with Allen-Bradley 200R VersaView Industrial PCs, as well as a legacy RSView32 SCADA system to give them more computing power and greater flexibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cFactoryTalk View SE was designed for this type of large scale integration,\u201d stated John Tertin, Director of Manufacturing Information Systems at ESE.\u00a0 \u201cRockwell Automation offers the FactoryTalk View SE Client which can be installed locally on a terminal, but in larger configurations, the recommended architecture is to use a Terminal Server that has the SE Client on it while terminals on the plant floor connect to the Terminal Server using Remote Desktop Services.\u00a0 There really is a minimal amount of configuration because that\u2019s what the product is designed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

After fully upgrading the hardware and software, a new set of needs and challenges became apparent to both the client, as well as ESE.\u00a0 Using the Allen-Bradley 200R VersaView Industrial PCs on the floor left the customer vulnerable to viruses and malware via the USB ports on the PCs.\u00a0 In addition, maintenance was a \"\"<\/a>headache as the control system is isolated from the internet and corporate networks which meant there was no way to upgrade or apply security patches to the Windows XP-based PCs.\u00a0 This made them more vulnerable and less efficient over time\u2026which is how ThinManager was introduced as a solution.<\/p>\n

By using ThinManager, they converted the VersaView 200Rs from PCs to thin clients via the PXE Boot <\/a>function (ThinManager XLi).\u00a0 PXE Boot allowed the PCs to load the ThinManager firmware directly from LAN, instead of using the Windows OS located on the PC hard drive.\u00a0 This let them immediately switch from PC based computing with high maintenance to thin client based computing with savings due to centralized management.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With most new software installs, there is usually a learning curve on the part of the integrator as they become accustomed to the best way to install and deploy new software.\u00a0 But, as John Tertin soon discovered, that was not an issue with ThinManager.\u00a0 \u201cIt was fairly straight forward.\u00a0 I\u2019d say we got the original configuration set up within a couple of days.\u00a0 And that included getting the clients set up with mirrored ThinServers, getting the AppLink <\/a>configured, and optimizing the settings relating to periodic monitoring for load balancing.\u00a0 The biggest hurdle was cross referencing verbiage and terminology, which required referring to the documentation and drawing a correlation between familiar functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked for an example, John stated, \u201cWe use the ThinManager AppLink, which by name is unfamiliar, but once you understand that using AppLink is the same as opening up RDS and clicking on the programs tab, it is pretty straight forward as long as you have familiarity with the software.\u201d<\/p>\n

After breezing through the ThinManager install, John and the other integrators at ESE immediately began to see the benefits of ThinManager.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s nice about ThinManager is that I can create my display client to look at one or a number of Terminal Servers where the configuration file already exists.\u00a0 At that point, it only takes 30 seconds to create another client because I only have to do the configuration on the Terminal Server once.\u00a0 Then, using AppLink as soon as I use the display server, it immediately launches because everything is going through that common Terminal Server which is only configured once.\u201d\u00a0 Highlighting another significant benefit to using the ThinManager platform, Tertin continued, \u201cWe used to have a 2-page written procedure for adding a SCADA terminal to the network including instructions on naming the computer, joining it to the control system domain, configuring automatic login, etc.\u00a0 Using ThinManager, this is no longer necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInstalling ThinManager allowed the customer to save significantly on their administrative costs because we no longer had to go to the facility and manually \"\"<\/a>disinfect SCADA terminals.\u00a0 After that happens a couple of times, the ROI<\/a> for a ThinManager solution is pretty apparent.\u00a0\u00a0 Now they are no longer susceptible to those viruses, nor are they required to continue installing Windows updates on the individual machines with no connectivity.\u00a0 They still have to keep the Terminal Server updated, but that is only one machine as opposed to dozens scattered across the plant floor,\u201d said John Tertin.<\/p>\n

So what does the future hold for ESE\u2019s large food manufacturing customer and ThinManager?\u00a0 \u201cThis is going to be the new standard,\u201d said John.\u00a0 \u201cThey have already standardized on the FactoryTalk View SE distributed platform, and ThinManager is part of that standard.\u00a0 Going forward, ThinManager will be employed wherever the SE system goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

View or download the PDF Version of this Success Story\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The ThinManager ROI Calculator can be found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Find out more about ESE here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stacking up the Benefits:\u00a0 ThinManager and Rockwell Automation       For nearly thirty years, ESE, Inc, the Engineering Solutions Experts, has seen continuous growth in plant automation engineering.\u00a0 Headquartered in Marshfield, Wisconsin, ESE specializes in Rockwell solutions for global food and beverage manufacturers. Yet, after years of providing support and upgrades, it became apparent […]<\/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":[8,23,59],"tags":[115,113,114,3,77,30],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cost-savings","category-general","category-real-world-thinmanager","tag-industrial-automation","tag-rockwell-automation","tag-scada","tag-thin-client","tag-thin-client-management","tag-thinmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","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=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1363,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.thinmanager.com\/thinclients\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}