Saturday, May 20, 2017

DeltaV Virtual Studio Version 3.3 - New Features

DeltaV Virtual Studio 3.3 has recently been released and I thought I’d brag about some of the new usability features that are included.

First off, DVS 3.3 is based on Microsoft Server 2016 and takes advantage of some of improvements in Hyper-V.  The first thing you’ll notice after you fire up DVS is the updated user interface:



In addition to showing the last operation executed on a VM, we include what’s currently happening along with a progress bar so you’ll know things are moving along.  We’ve also enhanced the information displayed in the lower right-hand corner for things like the hosts and VM’s.

We’ve enhanced the VM creation experience by allowing more adjustments during the initial setup.  In the previous version of DVS, you had to spin up a VM, then power it down to change things like allocated RAM and disk size.  In the 3.3 version, extra tabs have been added to the VM creation dialog box, allowing modifications to memory, processors, disk space and the enabling of Replication – during the initial creation:



When enabling Replication, the number of restores can now be adjusted, which previously required you to go into Hyper-V.  Increasing the number of restore points provides additional protection in case of machine corruption.  When changing the restore point number, DVS displays the additional hard drive space in the storage array that will be consumed.  For performance adjustments, the replication frequency can be slowed down – this might be acceptable for non-persistent nodes like operator stations.

Another powerful, timesaving feature is the VM Builder selection:



With the VM Builder tool, you can create multiple VM’s at the same time.  Like the VM Creation dialog, you select the DevData.cfg from your ProPlus that contains all the workstations and servers from your configuration:



A series of dialogs guide you through the setup of any or all the configured workstations and servers:



When you click the final Finish button, DVS will go out and spin up all the selected VMs – time for a couple of cups of coffee or even lunch.

DVS 3.3 is available at no charge to existing DVS 2.3.1 customers with Guardian Support and can be downloaded from the Guardian website.

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