PDMWorks New Installation 1

[CanCad1]

We have three active SolidWorks users here at my company. We will be installing PDM Works and since it is a fairly small group, is it okay to use my workstation as the server/vault? what are the Pros/Cons going this route. If okay, is it advisable to have a seperate hard drive installed as well? Any feedback and tips on how to get us functioning soon.

Thanks,
SD

 

[PDMAdmin]

That should work short-term. The main advantage is that you'll save money versus getting a separate machine running Windows Server as its OS. The disadvantage is that you'll only be able to handle up to 10 concurrent connections (which is adequate for now). Also, hosting the vault will hog some of your machine's resources. I've hosted a vault from my machine before, and I've never noticed any major problems. A separate hard drive can help for organizational purposes, but as long as your main hard drive has enough space, that should work.

 

[ctopher]

http://ww3.cad.de/foren/ubb/uploads...ault_Debug_Guide.pdf#search="pdmworks server"

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)

 

[Takami826]

I'm curious about using a dedicated workstation or a shared external drive as a vault as well opposed to a windows server. It's highly unlikely we'd ever have more than 10 people concurrently connected. At most, we have 12 people with solidworks, but 6-7 only ever use it daily. (those other 5-6 just like to have it but have no clue what to do with it, it's a waste of licensing really)

We'd prefer something we can manage and maintain ourselves opposed to having to hassle with IT beyond getting us all mapped to the workstation. I'm just in the investigative stages of PDMWorks to figure out what we want to do as a group.

CanCad1, did you ever get this ball rolling using a workstation and pdmworks? How's it working out for you?

 

[JMirisola]

Keep in mind that you'll want to be consistently backing up the vault. If it's simply hosted on you local machine, you'll need to put something in place to make sure this happens or you could end up losing everything.
We only have 3 users here, but our vault is on a network server. The only time I have to 'bug' the IT guy is when there's an update. Beyond that, I have full administrative control over the vault. Given the fact that updates occur infrequently, and that local workstations generally aren't backed up (yes, this varies), I'd strongly recommend putting it on a backed up server. It very well may save you major headaches in the future.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2MB RAM, nVidia 2500M

 

[Takami826]

IT has hassled us for years about using the networks servers because we take up too much space. We don't even currently have a shared drive, everyone's files are on their local machines and though I frequently back up to an external drive, I doubt many others do. When they finally let us use a server, they limited us to 1gb each. Being the primary CAD/SWX user here, I sucked that dry in a week. Then they kicked me out and made me take all the files off.

We've had several crashes over the years and have lost tons of data, but we can't get the support we need because we take up too much space. It took us being 'sneaky' to obtain an external drive to manually back up our files. It makes no sense, but that's how it is, and it's unlikely to change. The less we have to rely on IT the better.

The thing 'in place' will probably be me trekking to the shared workstation every week with the external drive to back the files up manually.

 

[JMirisola]

That's absolutely insane! I don't know what business you're in, but for your IT department to be so assinine will only end up costing your company big bucks. If they are that bad, and management won't support you, then you have no choice in the matter. I think, once you get your system up and running, that I'd be backing up more frequently than once a week.
Good luck!

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2MB RAM, nVidia 2500M

 

[ctopher]

If you think PDMWorks or IT is a hassle, it is to your benefit to learn PDMWorks and become the admin. The time it takes for you to learn it and understand saves $$ compared to the time wasted figuring out how to manage files on servers and desktops.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)

 

[Takami826]

That's why our primary desire is to rely on IT as little as possible.

I want to learn exactly what I need, step by step in every detail, (workstation vs server), what will work best for our group and I have no issues learning PDMWorks and becoming the admin and that's probably what would happen anyway. I'm convinced if this doesn't change now, bigger headaches are yet to come, more than what we've had over the past few years of pc deaths and data loss.

 

[engAlright]

Something else to consider is available RAM on your workstation - PDMW caches everything in RAM when it starts up so you don't want your workstation to take a performance.

Also if your workstation craps out you take not only yourself online but your co-workers as well. Dedicated server will not have as much load as a workstation, hence should be more reliable.

Note that if you have any kind of network structure at your company you can use your workstation to run the PDMW service and store the actual documents on a network server. This will be slower but more reliable.

 

[artbinct]

I installed PDMWorks on a PC hard drive 2X's. The hard drive crashed both times. The data was lost 1X. I was told by our IT guys that hard drives on servers are designed to be accessed more often then PC hard drives. I recommend putting the PDMWorks vault on a server. Anyone else have this happen?

 

[fcsuper]

I agree with Chris. If at all possible, keep PDMWorks administration within your department. Do not hand over any part of it to IT. If your company has a policy about locking away servers, then make sure you have full access. Some functions you will need to perform as an admin can only be done at the server.

And, don't use your workstation as a server. There can be issues from this.

Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA

http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php

 

[PDMAdmin]

Using a workstation is not recommended if you have a large user base, since you can only have something like ten concurrent connections. That problem goes away if you're running Windows Server. The data needs to be stored on something that is reliable and backed up; at my last job we had a RAID setup with SCSI hard drives and every night we backed up all the data onto a tape drive.