The ArchestrAnaut

I just checked the referring searches list & found that someone was looking for how to get an array’s length in IAS.  Well,  here’s my 5 minutes worth of notes on arrays.  All IAS arrays are one based (indexes start at one).  You can refer to a single index (VariableName[#]) or the entire array (VariableName[]).  I’m breaking the rest of the information down into two parts: UDA arrays & local script variable arrays.

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As I promised a while back I’ve started some explicit testing with IAS on VMWare VSphere (ESXi 4.1 Update 1 to be specific).  We all know the official support position of Wonderware but I wanted to prove or disprove some things to myself.

Well, I’ve come across the first thing that could bite you really hard if you are unaware.

There is a bug in the current release of ESX(i) that freezes your machine if you are running on an NFS data store and you try to remove a snapshot with CBT enabled.  While this may seem like a lot of things that have to line up, it’s actually not.  I think for most you can simplify this to if you are running NFS and you perform VM Backups with a modern software package you’re going to get caught.  By the way, CBT is changed block tracking.  It’s VSPhere’s way of tracking what data changes between backups.  This gives a huge assist to your backup software as it tries to perform differential backups.

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So I’m working on migrating some modules from 3.0 SP2 to 3.1 SP2 Patch 01.   When I went to look at a built-in Active Factory trend I noticed a couple field parameters weren’t trending.  Curious. I check out my configuration and sure enough the field parameters in question weren’t historized.

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With what seems like ages between releases of System Platform there’s really not much pressure to get in your “requests” for the next release cycle.  As a point of reference for those who haven’t been around System Platform that long, I started working with the software in 2005.  At the time the current release was 2.1.  Since then there has been one major release, 3.0 and a minor release, 3.1.  The only real game changer in the 3.0 release was ArchestrA graphics.  Unfortunately it took 3 patches to get that right, anyone remember Patch 2?  Release 3.1 has some neat additions with ACM and timestamp propagation but no major upgrades that are driving me to say “I need to upgrade”.

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