Figure 4.1.2.

1 – Time server configuration in ECS

Press the Save Changes button. Now the monitoring of time server starts on
clusterA and clusterB.

5.2 Overall setup of the control network

In this network all the PLCs that are polled by the ECS clusters are connected.
As a general recommendation, we should try to synchronize the time in the CPUs
by using NTP mechanism, in case the involved hardware adapters support it. If
this is not the case, the native solution of each PLC type would be chosen.

5.2.1 Siemens PLC

In case of Siemens, there are two ways of synchronizing the PLC clock:

NTP mode
This option should be chosen when the ECS clusters are polling the PLC units
using the TCP driver. In this case, it is usual that the NTP Time-of-Day
synchronization is supported.

No setup is required on the ECS software. On the PLC side, some steps must be
followed.

Notes:
Only IPs entries are supported as NTP server addresses; no host names.
Ensure that the PLC and time servers belong to the same subnet.
The update interval shall be set as 60s, as default.

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 17

 Supervision Net
TCP TCP
TCP TCP Adapter Adapter
Adapter Adapter

Cluster A Cluster B
Eng. Op.
(PS) (FS) Station Station
TCP TCP TCP
Adapter Adapter Adapter

Control Net

Siemens
PLC

Figure 4.2.1.1 – Time synchronization in a segmented TCP network - NTP

If all the components share the network (no networks segmentation), only a
single TCP adapter per device is required.

Cluster A Cluster B
Eng. Op.
(PS) (FS) Station Station
TCP TCP TCP TCP
Adapter Adapter Adapter Adapter

Siemens
PLC

Figure 4.2.1.2 – PLC Time synchronization in a single TCP network - NTP

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 18

 In the Simatic software package, some settings are required to activate the time
syncronization. These are illustrated below, depending of the hardware solution
used:

CPU S7400 with CP card

Figure 4.2.1.3 – CP 443-1 card configuration Figure 4.2.1.4 - CPU S7400 clock config.

CPU S7300 with CP card

Figure 4.2.1.5 – CP 443-1 card configuration Figure 4.2.1.6– CPU S7300 clock config.

Some CP 343-1 allows configuring the “Forward time of day to station” option.
This is by default enabled in the configuration since the CPU S7300 does not
usually support slave synchronization (see figure 4.2.1.6), but if the CPU provides
the option of requesting the time of day automatically from an NTP server using
the onboard Ethernet port, this CP option should be disabled. This avoids the time
of day acquired by the CPU from the NTP server being overwritten again by the
time of day received by the CP.

CPU S7400/300 with onboard Ethernet port

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 19

 Figure 4.2.1.7 – Ethernet port configuration Figure 4.2.1.8 – CPU clock configuration

This setup applies to a CPU with onboard Ethernet-port, (example 315-2 PN/DP),
using the ECS clusters as the time servers.

In order to enable time synchronization to the PLC using CPU with internal
Ethernet-port, the Siemens controllers have to be configured in accordance to the
above pictures.

Simatic mode
In case the PLC Ethernet adapters do not support TCP protocol, or the ECS
clusters are currently using the OSI driver (upgrade project), and no chance of
reconfiguration to TCP, then the Simatic time broadcast (native mechanism) is
used.
For this purpose, each ECS cluster must be equipped, at least, with two Network
Ethernet adapters, one for the supervision network with TCPv4 protocol enabled,
and another one with the RawEther driver enabled. Please refer to (“ECC -
Installation Manual”) for further details.
As default, the time is set in the PLCs once per hour, and the time source is
always one of the ECS clusters of a system.
In case of V7 and V8 systems running in parallel and polling PLCs connected
physically to the same network, it must be ensured that only a couple of ECS
clusters sends out the time broadcast to the controllers, so the function must be
disabled in the other systems, e.g. ECSv7, PXP, QCX, etc..
This mechanism requires some configuration, in the ECS as well as in the
Siemens software.

The image below illustrates a typical control system network with the minimum
required NIC adapters. The engineering station is optionally equipped with 2
cards, one to display the ECS data from the clusters, and another one to go
online on the PLC.

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 20

 Supervision Net
TCP TCP
TCP TCP Adapter Adapter
Adapter Adapter

Cluster A Cluster B
Eng. Op.
(PS) (FS) Station Station
RawEther RawEther TCP
Adapter Adapter Adapter

Control Net

Siemens
PLC

Figure 4.2.1.9 – PLC Time synchronization in a segmented network - OSI

In the ECS system that set the time in the PLCs, the broadcast message
frequency shall be configured as illustrated:

Figure 4.2.1.10 – Set time in PLC – Siemens with OSI

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 21

 In the rest of the systems (ECSv7, PXP, QCX) that share the network
infrastructure, the OSI time set frequency must be adjusted to 0, so only one pair
of ECS clusters is active in such function.

In the Simatic Step7 platform, the configuration is common regardless of the

hardware solution used.
No option to use this mechanism on a CPU with an onboard ethernet port, since it
won't usually support the ISO protocol.

CPU S7400/300 with CP card

Figure 4.2.1.11 – CP card configuration Figure 4.2.1.12 - CPU S7 clock config.

The “Forward time of day” option lets configure whether the CP will forward time-
of-day messages when it receives them from a SIMATIC time transmitter from
the LAN.
If there is more than one CP in a station connected to the same network, only
one of them is allowed to forward the synchronization messages.

5.2.2 ControlLogix CLX PLC

Here below a typical segmented network representation with the time

synchronization function implemented as the standard, i.e., the ECS clusters
forward the time signal to the PLC.

Time Synchronization ECS/ControlCenter 22