Dear all,

One of our client has a plant with redundant PLC S7-416H CPUs. We are asked to add a new unit, so we are planning ET200SP PN I/O cards, which supports S2 redundancy. However we want to know if it is possible to configure the hardware and download in Run mode. Also it should be possible to make hardware changes in ET200SP station and download in run. We know that this is possible with ET200M and ET200MP cards, but we have found no information if this is possible with ET200SP.

Thanks in advance,

Best Regards.

Hello,

sry, it looks like you need understand what is main CPU station and what is external I/O module or also external CPU station with I/O modules. You mix some infos that are not same. You said you want add new ET200SP to main system. Logically without cfg main system, ET200SP can't be recognized and working. Other situation (ET200M you mentioned) is replace some card with new, not add new card but in case of replace faulty one but your info isn't correct probably. I see not possible to add new HW without STOP and reconfigure main system.

Dear Duris_I,

Thanks for the reply. Maybe  I was not very clear in my previous post. The plant is running with 416-H plc and ET200M stations. We will add a new system in this plant, and we want to use ET200SP cards (new PN interface modules and IO cards) for this system. We will add this new ET200SP rack in existing 416-H plc. We check that it seems possible, but we want to know if it possible to download the new configuration in Run mode.   

Edit: I know download HW configuration to single S7-400 in Run mode is impossible. But I am not sure if in redundant S7-400 download in Run mode is possible or not.

Best Regards.

Hello! Yes, you can download and stop the first PLC then synchronise both. Read this topic for step by step operation: 

https://support.industry.siemens.com/tf/ww/en/posts/s7-417h-dowloading-hardware-config-that-will-not-stop-cpu/30620/

Also, in the future you can use CIR for smoother hardware upgrades: 

https://cache.industry.siemens.com/dl/files/505/14040505/att_47225/v1/cir_en.pdf