In my facility (steel mill), we are currently using Step 7 5.3 + HF1. I have about 50 PLCs networked via Profibus and Ethernet. Currently, I have Step 7 installed on a Server 2003 Terminal Server and use Windows Remote Desktop clients to access this server. There are, at times, several engineers and/or technicians connected to this machine at any given time either troubleshooting or programming any of the PLCs/projects in our facility. This works OK except for the fact that only one person can go online at any given time. Prior to the release of HF3 this functionality was there, but was lost when I went to HF3. I destroyed the entire Step 7 installation and again installed 5.3 HF1, but I was never able to have multiple people go online simultaneously again. Yesterday, I received a shipment of Step 7 5.4 SP1 software and installed it on a test server, and now, only one user at a time can use Step 7. I believe this "feature" was first introduced in 5.3 HF3. We are properly licensed for five copies of Step 7, and the licensing manager properly handles multiple connections to this server, so I'm not sure why Siemens is apparently not supporting Terminal Services. Is there anyone else out there struggling with this? Has anyone gotten this to work?

The way we have it set up, ALL the projects reside on one PC (Server) that is shared. One laptop is kept up to date (HF3). The projects are run from that directory on server. The only thing that we can not do from HF1 Server machine is set some of the hardware parameters on the HF3 only PLC's (318). The server machine runs the TS and all to normal daily coding (including poor dude on nights). Any specific changes to the hardware or networking is done from single laptop.

The hardware updates seem to catch most of the items that HF3 is needed for, and the benefits from V5.4 (there are plenty) are NOT worth the loss of the TS programming ability.

Johnston City must have been called on this more than once, as they were well aware of this problem.