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Before you start
What goes where
Raylux is Nexus plus clients. Plan Nexus first — everything else connects to it.
| Machine | Install | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Nexus server | Raylux Nexus | One per site. Runs continuously as a service. This is the machine that talks to the PLCs. |
| Engineering workstation | Raylux Studio | One per engineer. Does not need to be the Nexus machine. |
| Operator machine | nothing | Operators open a browser and point it at Nexus. |
| Plant-floor panel | Raylux Lens | Only if the panel has no desktop or must not show one. Otherwise use a browser. |
You can install Studio on the Nexus machine as well — the Windows installer offers it — but on a production install it is usually left out.
Nexus requirements
Windows
- Windows Server 2019 or later, or Windows 10/11 (64-bit).
- Administrator rights to install.
- ~1.5 GB of disk for the program, plus room for the historian, which grows with your tag count and logging rate.
Linux
Linux is currently a build-from-source deployment. There is no .deb, .rpm or container image yet, and Nexus you build is tied to the machine you built it on. If you want a supported, packaged install today, use Windows. See Install on Linux for the procedure and the exact limitations.
Sizing
There is no published sizing table yet, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. As a starting point, a Nexus instance polling a few thousand tags at one-second rates runs comfortably on 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM. The historian is the component that grows: budget disk against your tag count, your logging rates and how long you keep history.
No endurance testing has been published
Raylux monitors its own memory, thread and handle trends and exposes them as [SYSTEM] tags, but a multi-day soak test with real device traffic has not been published. On a first deployment, watch Nexus's Performance page over the first week rather than assuming.
Network
Nexus needs:
- To reach your PLCs on their protocol ports.
- To be reachable by operators and engineers on 8080 (HTTP) and 8443 (HTTPS).
The Windows installer creates firewall rules for Nexus program on the Private and Domain profiles only — never Public. See Ports and firewall.
Which installer
The Windows download is two files. Use the first unless you have a reason not to.
| File | Use it when |
|---|---|
RayluxSetup-<version>-x64.exe | Normal installs. A wizard that installs the Microsoft C++ runtime Nexus needs, then Nexus itself. |
Raylux-<version>-x64.msi | Deployment through Group Policy, SCCM, Intune or msiexec /qn. Does not install the C++ runtime — see below. |
The MSI does not install the C++ runtime
Nexus requires the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015–2022 redistributable (x64). The RayluxSetup bundle installs it for you; the MSI cannot, because Windows Installer cannot install another MSI from inside one. On a machine that has never had it, an MSI-only install produces a service that fails to start with a missing-DLL error.
If you deploy the MSI, deploy VC_redist.x64.exe alongside it.