RE: Advice on replacement for Elve

[peadard]

HI all.
I have a fairly large installation consisting of about 40 Elk M1 units.
I previously managed this with Elve and spent two years building an interface with temperature, logging security control, fire alarm control etc.
Since Elve seems to have died completely and I cannot get any response to my emails or get my commercial license reset I am looking for a viable alternative to replace Elve.
Has anybody used any of the other software packages to do anything similar?
What I liked about Elve was the ability to store values and write them to a SQL database for retrieval later(I used this extensively for temperature logging), the ability to create custom screens using custom graphics and the ability to create custom rules.
 Also of benefit would be an iOS client and a desktop client for the users to access.
I have attached a pic of the home screen so you can get an idea of what I need to do.
If anybody has any ideas of what software I may be able to use to replicate this I would be very grateful.
Regards.
Peadar Donnellan.
P.S at the moment the install consists of 40 M1 units but this is likely to grow in the future.
 

 

[Dean Roddey]

CQC could certainly handle all of that, so it's an option for you.

 

[peadard]

Thanks Mate. I was actually just looking at one of your setup demo videos.
I think I will give it a shot.
There is no issue adding that many M1 units?

 

[Dean Roddey]

No, there shouldn't be any issues. We have sport bar setups that have hundreds of drivers running. BTW, we strangely have a fairly strong customer base down under. I'm not sure why that is, but it's the case. So you'll run into various folks on the forum from your neck of the woods that you can exchange ideas with.

 

[peadard]

Thats good to hear, it's always good to know there others in the same boat. We mainly run VmWare infrastructure here so most likely i would install the system on Server 2008 R2 on a virtual machine.
In the past there have been issues with licensing linked to MAC addresses and in a virtual environment these MAC addresses can change sporadically resulting in licenses having to be reset.
Does CQC licensing operate by this method? I ask because I can if necessary install on a physical machine.

 

[Dean Roddey]

A number of our customers do use VMs. One has had a sporadic relicense issue, but no one else has, so not sure what is up in his case. Though, if it's not an issue, I'd still give it its own machine in such a large installation, just to be extra sure of maximum stability and consistency of available resources and such like. No one probably ever got fired for being too conservative in such scenarios.

 

[peadard]

Very true but the VmWare setup we have here is enterprise scale and would offer the best resources imaginable. I would prefer to use it if possible as we have a team of people maintaining it.
The physical machine I could use has 16 G Ram and 4 Core CPU so would definitely do the job

 

[Dean Roddey]

Worst case, if you have any reason to doubt, you can always move to a real machine later, so probably safe enough to do it that way.

 

[peadard]

Cool. Thanks for all your info.

 

[wkearney99]

Very true but the VmWare setup we have here is enterprise scale and would offer the best resources imaginable. I would prefer to use it if possible as we have a team of people maintaining it.
The physical machine I could use has 16 G Ram and 4 Core CPU so would definitely do the job

 
The problem with VM for this sort of thing is they're not real-time.  There's no guarantees that tasks are going to run with the kind of timing that monitoring and control systems often require.  Doesn't really matter how robust the host machine is.  4 cores and only 16gb isn't exactly 'enterprise' grade.
 
Truly you're better off running it on it's own iron.  Doesn't have to include a lot or RAM or be blisteringly fast, just ready to do what's needed without interruptions.

 

[peadard]

 

 
The problem with VM for this sort of thing is they're not real-time.  There's no guarantees that tasks are going to run with the kind of timing that monitoring and control systems often require.  Doesn't really matter how robust the host machine is.  4 cores and only 16gb isn't exactly 'enterprise' grade.
 
Truly you're better off running it on it's own iron.  Doesn't have to include a lot or RAM or be blisteringly fast, just ready to do what's needed without interruptions.

 
 
"The physical machine I could use has 16 G Ram and 4 Core CPU so would definitely do the job"

Those are the specs for the spare physical machine I have.. The host for VMware is an enterprise ESX host. Sorry for the confusion

 

[Automate]

Interesting discussion about running HA on VMs. Sounds like he did not have any problems running a very large Elve system on a VM other than the MAC/license issue.

 

[Dean Roddey]

As I said, we have plenty of users to do it. It's just sort of my 'job' to argue for the least moving parts in any system where it's practical. It's just one fewer thing to point the fickle finger of blame at if you have any issues. Not that I expect any, but you know ahead of time that anything you don't use in a given system can't ever be a problem in that system.

 

[tmbrown97]

Funny - I'd be far more inclined to go virtual over physical for something that's that important... the reason being that you can get it set up, locked down, and secure - and then not touch it.  With a physical machine, any time you touch the hardware you are messing with the instance of the OS and software; whereas in a virtual environment, if you need to give it a little more horsepower or a faster disk or whatever, it can be done purely through the hypervisor leaving the OS/Software installation relatively untouched.  Even migrating to new hardware as things change or upgrading or whatever - it's done just by moving the VM around.

 

[pete_c]

Yup; here a few years back tested Homeseer running in a VM using using a Digi USB Anywhere and Lantronix USB device talking two two Digi 8 port usb to serial devices for some total of 16 serial plus 5 USB devices.  Two of the USB devices carried audio; one via a Way2Call box and another using a  USB sound card.
 
It worked well and I was pleased.  Today there are a number of Homeseer users running Homeseer on a VM. 
 
Personally though here it was used more for testing and I did actually go back to using one computer (windows server); but very small footprint low powered box.  Looking to shrink the HA multi IO device to an even smaller footprint these days and switching from MS server to Linux.  (IE fitting it inside of the HAI OPII CAN)..must be some part of me that still a "server hugger".
 
Unrelated but sort of related on a "work" effort did have issues running Business Objects, relating to using VM's and methodologies of licensing  when SAP purchased BI; relating to number of cores utilized real or VM wise; real PITA to deal with the licensing logic redone by SAP.