Setup help for dual instance of Thingworx on the same machine

[teovrabie]

Disclaimer: I know this is not indicated and I don't intend to use this in production.

Using Thingworx 9.3.6 with Postgres on Windows

I want to use one machine to set up two separate Thingworx instances. My goal is simply to have a clean, separate copy of our lab environment which we can use for testing our projects deployment.

I have gone through the manual installation steps without problems, setting up Tomcat to run on a different port, making a new DB to connect to. I am now stuck because my 2nd instance cannot acquire connections from the DB and crashes. I have the platform-settings.json correctly setup, and I even tried the advice offered under this thread for setting the ENV variable THINGWORX_PLATFORM_SETTINGS, but unfortunately I was unsuccessful.

Any up-to-date advice / setup steps for doing this would be greatly appreciated

[Constantine]

Just my 2 cents:

1. What happens if you launch them in the opposite order? Is it always the same instance which fails to acquire connection (then it means something's wrong with its config), or is it the last one, which fails (then it likely means they try to use the same DB)?
2. If you are able to start them individually, open ThingworxPersistenceProvider in Composer, go to Configuration and note the JDBC connection string for both instances, then compare them. This should provide you the lead, as you'll know the real exact values those instances use.

/ Constantine

[slangley]

Hi @teovrabie 

Unfortunately, installing multiple versions of ThingWorx on the same machine isn't a scenario supported by PTC.  The biggest problem with trying to do this is related to the "trusted storage."  The trusted storage is comprised of files, sometimes hidden depending on the system, that contains the details of the ThingWorx license including the Device ID.  Since each ThingWorx instance has a unique Device ID and possibly differing features depending on the part numbers that were selected for each licensing host, running multiple versions of ThingWorx results in corruption of these files, which can then prevent one or more of the instances from starting.  Currently, it is not possible to choose where these files are stored.

Apologies that this is not a configuration that can be accommodated, but hopefully this information will save you from expending unnecessary hours trying to get it to work.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Regards.

--Sharon

[Constantine]

It should be possible to circumvent this by installing two JVMs side-by-side. Each one would have its own independent trusted storage… Or not?

[nmutter]

I know (some) PTC licensing files are stored in user home directory (on linux at least). with different user accounts this could work.

But I would recommend a setup with docker. but not sure if twx running with windows (vm) is a hard requirement of author.

[slangley]

Hi @teovrabie.  

Just checking to see if you have any further questions on this post.

One option I failed to mention earlier, is that in addition to the Docker option mentioned by @nmutter, you can set up VM's to host each ThingWorx instance needed, thereby running multiple versions on the same hardware.

Regards.

--Sharon

[slangley]

Hi @Constantine 

The trusted storage isn't tied to the JVM.

Regards.

--Sharon

[slangley]

Hi @teovrabie 

If you feel you were provided a suitable response to this post, please mark the appropriate one as the Accepted Solution for the benefit of others in the community.

Regards.

--Sharon