I have a problem where a chinese supplier has comissioned a plant which has Centum CS3000 DCS system. Now within a year the DCS service provider in India raised a serious issue where they say that the Both the existing hardware Dell T5500 and its Operating system Win XP, have become Obsolete and are no longer supported and manufactured. Which translates into, if we have a hardware failure then the new hardware will not support win XP and without XP no CS3000. then only solution is to upgrade the DCS system with new hardware, load Windows 7, and then install the upgraded Centum VP. all put together it is 35 lakhs additional burden.

Has anybody a suggestion or a solution for the same?

Pl guide and suggest.

 

that's correct you have to upgrade CENTUM CS3000 to CENTUM VP which means:

1- replace the existing controllers
2- upgrade the software from CENTUM CS3000 to CENTUM VP

accordingly you have to use win 7 instead of win XP , which may lead to replace the workstations.

Kind Regards,
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Eng. /Ali Mohamed Soltan
Electrical & Automatic Control Services
General Manager Assistant
Assuit Oil Refining Co. [ASORC]
[email protected]

 

Dear sir,

My feeling is why cannot we install Win XP in regular Workstations.
Just because the Dell has discontiued the services and production, we have to upgrade the entire systems. Cannot we think of an alternative.
Present day workstations are they not suitable for running windows XP?

 

We were still installing WindowsNT on new workstations in 2006 for similar reasons. It saved us doing controls upgrades simply due to HMI hardware failures. With an investment of time to figure out how to get all the drivers to work, you can install winXP on a modern workstation. you just have to be willing to and have justification for putting the time and effort into it to make it work.

 

Mr. Ali

I think you do not need to change your controllers if you are going to migrate into centum Vp from CS3000. KFCS and FFCS type FCSs are compatible for centum VP projects and run very well. You need to change controllers only if you need additional features of controllers.

 

Regarding your problem, we had the same issue: our OPC servers (running YOKOGAWA GSGW and HIMA HOPC) are out of date and we have to use new hardware which are not supporting windows 2000 server or xp.

I'm currently thinking of two different solutions:

1- use a Vnet/IP to Vnet gateway to interface my entire control systems with the new server which is working with CENTUM VP (running on Windows 7). This way I can leave my control systems intact and just modify my OPC server station.

2- Use VMware to virtualize the operation system's environment. I can use a new Hardware and install the old windows xp (on WMware) which is captured from the old server. I have done the same for YOKOGAWA Exaquantum in a large refinery plant and it was working fine.