Category Archives: Soft Tech Support Gateway

VirtualBox Questions for Soft Tech Support Gateway

Q: How to shutdown the Soft Tech Support Gateway?

A: Always use the exit command inside the virtual machine to issue a normal shutdown command.  This ensures that setting are saved properly.


Q: How important are the virtualbox settings?

A: You should look at the settings examples and make them match.   The operating system selection, and the network configuration settings are particularly critical.   The network needs to be set to bridged mode and must be set to the correct active network interface.


Q: Should I use the Host-Only network option during installation of the VirtualBox.org software?

A: No.   Do not install this as it has caused some network issues in some cases.


Q:  What is included with the Virtual Machine download?

A: Each registered user has access to their own download area which includes a download for the field client app and a download for the Virtualbox based app.  The Virtualbox app download includes a copy of the virtual machine instance and instructions for setup and runs slightly less than a 90 MB download.   The Virtualbox instance is shipped in the .ova exported appliance format which can be imported into Virtualbox or VMWare.


Q:  How can I check my IP address on my Virtual machine Soft Tech support gateway?

A: The normal method is the use your “Manage My Remote” screen which under normal operating conditions will indicate the IP addresses of the components.   If you are trouble shooting connection issues you can view your IP address inside the virtual machine by starting a Terminal session and issuing an ifconfig command.

 


 

Technical Update on the Soft Tech Support Gateway

We are super pleased with this new Soft Tech Support Gateway option.   This option runs in a very small, efficient Linux virtual machine instance that runs within the same computer as your development environment.   The entire virtual machine instance takes just over 100 MB of hard drive space.  There are many windows apps that take more space than this.  We tested it and allowed for the virtual machine instance to use minimal machine resources of 512 MB of ram with 1 CPU core, and performance was outstanding.    We feel this is in the virtual machine space kind of like what the Pi was in the hardware space.

We continue to have real world field success in environments where VPN’s will not work, like with PLC’s that do not have a gateway address pre-configured and will therefore only talk to a local area subnet address, or in cases where there are duplicate subnet networks involved that will not route properly over VPN.

— Chester G., Chief Designer

VMware Test Successful – *New* Starter Kit with a Soft Tech Support Gateway

The Virtualbox Soft Tech Support Gateway build was just tested successfully using VMware by exporting the Virtualbox instance from Virtualbox using the Export Appliance command, and then using the File –> Open command under VMware to import the appliance into VMware.

— Updated:  We are now shipping the Virtualbox instance as an exported appliance, which is VMWare ready for import.