“Historically, high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions in supervisory control systems were expensive to implement, not only because of hardware and software costs, but also because of additional administrative burdens,” said Maryanne Steidinger, director of product marketing, Invensys Operations Management. “Along with many other benefits, when ArchestrA System Platform 2012 and InTouch 2012 software are deployed, they support high-availability and disaster-recovery implementations using Windows Server Hyper-V virtualisation from Microsoft, as well as the latest remote desktop services that are part of Windows Server 2008 R2. Now, after a rigorous validation period, our ArchestrA System Platform 2012 and Wonderware InTouch 2012 software are also certified for disaster recovery and high availability using VMware virtualisation. All this is possible on commercial operating systems using off-the-shelf hardware, further reducing cost and easing implementation of mission-critical applications.”
Virtualisation software, like that offered by Microsoft and VMware, transforms or “virtualises” a computer’s hardware, e.g., the CPU, hard drive and network controller, to create a virtual computer that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer. By sharing hardware resources with each other, multiple operating systems can run simultaneously on a single physical computer. And because it has the CPU, memory and network devices of the “host,” a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard operating systems, applications and drivers. With virtualisation, users can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it needs them. And it’s all possible with commercial off-the-shelf hardware and operating systems.
“End users are rapidly deploying virtualisation solutions to reduce the number of physical servers needed for their plants in order to lower their hardware costs, IT costs and energy bills,” said Craig Resnick, vice president, ARC Advisory Group. “Virtualisation technology also helps end users with system deployment of high-availability, disaster-recovery and fault-tolerance solutions as it is used to quickly get plants back up and running when computers fail, regardless of location. Invensys Operations Management’s certification for both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V ensures that its customers are covered and protected regardless of their choice of platform.”
While the underlying technology is sophisticated, virtualisation can deliver benefits that are much simpler to understand and achieve. By eliminating dependencies between the physical hardware and the software, customers have more choices to better manage their applications, servers and equipment. One of the many benefits is the ability to move virtual machines between host computers, which enables a variety of different fail-safe scenarios to be implemented, each providing options for different levels of redundancy that make systems more resilient, less prone to equipment failure, less prone to site failure and simpler to upgrade.
“At OpsManage’11 last fall, we set up and demonstrated a scenario where an entire primary system in Florida failed over to a backup disaster recovery system in California,” Steidinger said. “Customers were impressed with the ease and speed with which the backup system took over control, using only commercial hardware. That’s the flexibility they are looking for to modernise and optimise their business. As the first industrial automation provider to be certified for high availability, disaster recovery and fault tolerance on the two major virtualisation platforms, we look forward to continuing to offer the products our customers need to achieve the highest levels of compliance, collaboration and operational excellence.”
Currently I work for Dell and thought your article on virtualization is quite impressive. I think Virtualisation technology is software technology which uses a physical resource such as a server and divides it up into virtual resources called virtual machines (VM's).Virtualization allows users to consolidate physical resources, simplify deployment and administration, and reduce power and cooling requirements.
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