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mdebower18-Opal
18-Opal
November 12, 2014
Solved

CAD Worker as a VM?

  • November 12, 2014
  • 4 replies
  • 5237 views

Hey there...

I have done a quick search and could not find a definitive answer. Can you create a VM for the CAD Worker? Or does it require a physical machine with graphics card?

-marc

CAD / PLM Systems Manager

    Best answer by TomU

    No, the publisher uses a non-graphical session of Creo and therefore will not use or leverage a graphics card at all. I have our CAD worker running on a Windows 7 VM with a mere 12 MB assigned to the virtual graphics card and it's working great.

    Make sure you get a node locked license for your worker (either the free visualization license or some other license). This will allow you to run as many simultaneous Creo sessions as you want, as long as you give the worker sufficient resources. I'm running 15 sessions of Creo concurrently on one VM with one license and it's working great! There are some caveats to getting this working correctly though, so let me know if you need the details.

    4 replies

    Marco Tosin
    21-Topaz I
    Marco Tosin21-Topaz I
    21-Topaz I
    November 12, 2014

    Hi Marc,

    we use a VM machine for the CAD Worker since 2009.

    It's a Win 2008 R2 server, with a WMware SVGA 3d graphic card.

    Marco
    T
    23-Emerald IV
    TomU23-Emerald IVAnswer
    23-Emerald IV
    November 12, 2014

    No, the publisher uses a non-graphical session of Creo and therefore will not use or leverage a graphics card at all. I have our CAD worker running on a Windows 7 VM with a mere 12 MB assigned to the virtual graphics card and it's working great.

    Make sure you get a node locked license for your worker (either the free visualization license or some other license). This will allow you to run as many simultaneous Creo sessions as you want, as long as you give the worker sufficient resources. I'm running 15 sessions of Creo concurrently on one VM with one license and it's working great! There are some caveats to getting this working correctly though, so let me know if you need the details.

      C
      CarTorn926301-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      November 12, 2014

      Tom, I would definitely like to know the details on avoiding VM Cad worker caveats. Thanks! -Marvin

      T
      23-Emerald IV
      TomU23-Emerald IV
      23-Emerald IV
      November 19, 2014

      Sorry for the delay. Basically you need to do the following:

      On the CAD worker

      1. Create a dedicated user account for each worker.
      2. Create a dedicated GS Worker daemon process for each worker (using the accounts from step 1)
      3. Create a unique folder and adapter config for each worker
      4. Manually modify the worker scripts with the "-DA" option
      5. Manually modify each proestartup.bat file with "taskkill" line
      6. Optional - create dedicated upload subfolders for each worker. (Before I did this I had some issues with different workers attempting to create folders with the same name causing write conflicts.)

      On the server

      1. Add entries to the "hosts" file for the additional "phantom" worker machines
      2. Add the additional workers to the Worker Agent Administration. (I found this easier to do by hand with a text editor. The file is located at <wt_home>\conf\wvs\agent.ini .)
      3. If using shared folders, leave the agent.ini lines for username and password blank (these are for ftp only)
      4. Create additional publish queues, one for each worker.
      5. Optional - create a dedicated background method server for WVS.

      This is all covered in these articles:

      https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS29308

      https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS43769

      https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS41866

      https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS162756

      And of course, the Visualization Services Guide (10.2 M020)

      http://support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/157363/en/WindchillVisualizationServicesGuide_10-2_M020.pdf

      Let me know if you have any questions. If there is enough interest I could probably put some type of actual guide together.

        B
        BjoernRueegg17-Peridot
        17-Peridot
        November 13, 2014

        We also recommend to run the worker in a VM. Just check how much RAM it takes to open up the biggest assembly and pack some more (e.g. 4GB) on top. So the worker doesn't have any problems to convert all the models.

        Björn

        T
        23-Emerald IV
        TomU23-Emerald IV
        23-Emerald IV
        November 13, 2014

        When I first set our system up with multiple workers I increase the vCPU count to 16 and the vRAM to 80 GB. I've since backed off some. I really need to go back and see what it really needs and pare this back some more.

        With this setup I'm averaging 1 publish per second (86,000 per day). I needed this for a bulk re-publish of over a million objects.

        L
        LoriSood23-Emerald I
        23-Emerald I
        November 22, 2014

        Marc,

        It looks like you got a lot of good answers here. Did you get what you needed?

        H
        hvaradharajan-21-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        July 8, 2016

        Hi,

        Anyone tried with using Windows Server 2008 as a Office Document worker ? (Iam not talking about Adobe Livecycle Server).

        Can we have one machine to be a multiple worker ? (Multiple Doc worker or Multiple CAD Worker)

        Thanks

        Hari

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