Building a SCADA solution is not an easy thing and everybody knows it. If you need to have a mission critical solution for your business, it is essential to create a good architecture of your solution and make sure to choose a very stable software platform.
How is it possible to run an application 24/7, 365 days a year? Is it possible to have an application for more than 6 years?
It looks impossible, but this option really does exist. Our D2000 SCADA is one of the most stable programming platforms with uptimes longer than 3 or 5 years and still working. It means, that applications built in D2000 can run 24/7/365 for years without any outages.
What features did we have to implement to achieve the goal? The magic is in the redundancy options of D2000 application server, which lies at the heart of solutions we develop.
If you have critical applications, where mistakes or failures are not allowed, redundancy of an application server is a must. It means that every application server can have one or more "backup" copies running on a different computer or even at geographically separated location.
Network redundancy is also possible, enabling us to send data by a secondary connection in case the primary connection fails to confirm data transfer.
But how about the archived data which SCADA or MES users usually perceive as a significant asset? (Just ask them!) And in many cases, there are quite significant amounts of data, which need to be protected from loss. If you want to guard your data and minimize possible downtimes, it is possible to multiply (or triple or generally multiple) your archive databases. Should one archive database fail (due to hardware or software error), our system automatically selects another archive database as a source for user data. Moreover, while multiple redundant archive databases are working, user requests may be evenly distributed among them. This functionality is handled by archive load balancing in D2000.
In addition, communication processes and various other system processes in your SCADA solutions can be doubled as well. As for communication, many of implemented protocols also support redundancy.
We have tried to build a redundant solution using Raspberry Pi, with great success. The two Raspberries work together like two servers and when one of them had a problem, the second one saved everything.
Forget your nightmares about system failures and losing all your data or built solutions. In the field of industrial automation, it is possible to have a back-up for everything you need and this way, you are able to keep your applications running almost forever.
