Change management software

[aFouraker]

On my plant floor I would like to periodically monitor my various MLC/HMI systems and determine if a change has been made to the logic, motion, parameters, screens, etc. I would then like to backup/archive any relevant changes and store them on my server so that I have a central location for all of the machine code, parameters, etc. and can use this for my internal support needs. 

Is there a way to detect and backup this data in an automatic way? 

[Thoomas]

Detect sounds almost impossible to me ...  Backup could be (partly) possible, under some conditions ... 

@SchneJoe : Could you answer this question, please?

[SchneJoe]

Hello @aFouraker,

I want to share some thoughts with you:

1) Parameter: You could monitor changes of paramter via the checksum functionality. See A-0-0012, C-0-0112 and S-0-0326. A backup could be executed in the PLC or via MLPI.

2) PLC Code: I think you could monitor changes with checking the diagnostic logbook. The messages should be in A03** range.
Another possibility would be checking the file date of the bootproject on the OEM partition with FTP or SFTP.
But you need to download the sourcecode anyhow. You could activate automatic download in the IndraWorks Project, or you need to download a new archive manually after every change. I think the archive could be monitored and downloaded via FTP/STFP, but for the automatic source download I am not sure. I think you can only use it, when you upload it from the MLC with IndraWorks. Therefore you could create an image of the XM controller with FirstTouch, but I am not sure how to do this in an automated way. I don't know if MLPI could handle this.

I hope this gives you some ideas.
Best regards, Jörg

FYI: @Thoomas 

[aFouraker]

@SchneJoe, thank you for the recommendation. MLPI seems like a good option for monitoring. However, some of these systems are legacy and do not have the capability to download source code. Is there a list of essential files that could be downloaded when a change occurs that could at least be used to get a system backup and running? The use case I imagine is someone making an undocumented change and then a system failure occurs requiring the systme to be restored. 

[SchneJoe · Accepted solution]

@aFouraker, when you focus on PLC code, you can save the files on the OEM partition (OEM\ProjectData\PLC). If you restore these files and reboot the control, the original PLC code should run again.

If you use persistent data in the PLC, it is getting a little more complicated. Please check the documentation about C-0-1001 and C-0-1002. With these commands you can save and restore persistent data (PLC variables and C-/A-Parameter) to a file (\OEM\ProjectData\MLC_NVRAM.bak). But some of the parameters are not included in this file. They are stored in parameterfiles in \OEM\ProjectData\PAR.

Following scenario could be possible:
- check if bootproject has changed (/OEM/ProjectData/PLC/Application.app)
- stop plc
- switch to P2
- restore plc-, parameter- and NVRAM files
- excute C-0-1001
- reboot control

I didn't try this yet. So please check it carefully before implementing this at a customer machine.