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Running multiple IP’s and programs on one server

Tags: Networking, Windows

Hello everyone. I am a fairly green electrical engineer with little experience in IT and networking. At my job we have a support rack that houses 4 Windows servers and a few power supplies. The purpose of this rack is to acquire data from various instrumentation, command & control of various components through a LabVIEW GUI, output instrumentation values to a GUI, and control the power supplies. Each of the 4 servers contains a LabVIEW program on them to perform these functions. The programs are not extremely complex in nature.

We need to build another one of these racks but the person who designed them is no longer here. The servers are $1500 each so I am wondering how difficult it would be to have all of these programs running from one server, each partitioned with it’s own IP address.

I feel like this might be a very vague question within the realm of IT and networking, and for that I apologize. But any advice or direction from the experts would be appreciated. Thank you.

Topic

I’ve run into this 1,500 buck PC problem before.

In reply to Running multiple IP’s and programs on one server

One of the products I author was for a semi-automatic test system. The company IT wanted to buy industrial PCs at quite the high price. I didn’t agree and told them to use their cast off office PCs. Fortunately the CEO and the head of production said “try it.” It worked fine and if a PC failed we tossed it and got another without bothering the IT.

On another system we racked a common desktop since they wanted a more industrial look. Again, we recycled an old rack after a trip to Home Depot to get spray paint to give the rack a once over. The desktop PC was strapped to a rack shelf and cables and such zip tied down. That ran for over a decade.

-> I don’t know what you mean by partitioned. Maybe you are talking about Virtual Machines but sure, if the app is that well contained then why not? Virtual Box is still free and as to IP addresses that may depend on the host OS such as https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/support/kb/DD1990270#:~:text=Click%20on%20″Advanced”%20near%20the,TCP%2FIP%20Address”%20window. calls out.

Frankly for long term support I’d not go virtual but challenge why they are buying high priced PCs.

Reply To: Running multiple IP’s and programs on one server

In reply to Running multiple IP’s and programs on one server

Perfectly fine to use multiple IPs on the same subnet even using the same network interface if it supports it. We do it all the time with Windows servers.

On the *nix servers, it will come in on one interface and likely OUT the interface with the default gateway on it….since typically *nix typically only uses a single default gateway…you could force it out other interfaces with static routing but that’s probably not necessary if everything is working peachy.

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