How to clone a cRIO 9074

[TecRix]

We are using cRIO 9074s to control and monitor remote systems and would like to have "clones" of each unit for use as spares.  We have experienced one failure of an active 9074 and had to build/configure a second unit on the spot, which was too time consuming.

Is there a utility for coping all the software & settings from one cRIO to another so that we can “drop-in” the spare unit quickly?  (We have utilities for assigning the proper IP address to the “cloned” unit.)

[ChrisStrykesAgain · Accepted solution]

TecRix,

Fortunately there are several options available to do this, dependent upon what version of LabVIEW you are using and how many devices you want to deploy the image to.

For a general overview, you can read through the following white paper:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/595401C59F89ECCC862578CC005D0887

To summarize, however:

If you LabVIEW version is prior to 2010, I would recommend viewing this white paper:

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3937/en/

To do it programatically in LabVIEW 2010 and newer, the system configuration API should be helpful:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-13216

To deploy the same image to numerous targets in a batch process, I would use our Replication and Deployment (RAD) utility:

http://www.ni.com/example/30986/en/

If none of these tools fit your needs, or if you need help using them let me know and we can pursue this further.

[robdevyogi]

I had a hard time getting the Initialize Session.vi (LV2013) to not return an error when I gave it a specific IP address. Turns out you have to give it IP and MAC address as parameter all in one string, the MAC address is in parenthesis (e.g. 192.168.0.1 (00:7F:2F:0B:C8:32)). This VI (https://decibel.ni.com/content/servlet/JiveServlet/download/12849-1-21389/Manage%20RT%20Software%20o... me finally figure this out. I'm using cRIO-9012 in this case. (Got error: -2147220621)