SCADA Redundancy Configuration
SCADA redundancy is one of the features that always being requested for automation system development or integration. Simply because nowadays’ site operation just cost too much to risk a breakdown, or even a minor system halt for a brief seconds.
What is SCADA system redundancy? It is a SCADA system setup which consists of one or more redundant server(s) to ensure the system availability. When primary server fails, the redundant / standby server shall takeover the primary role and do the jobs, until the primary server recovers. Hence it serves as the basic requirement for any critical operation.
Enable Redundancy
In this training we shall cover all the required steps to configure redundancy in a SCADA system by using Ecava IGX. First, launch Ecava IGX Project Editor and open any new or existing project, then navigate to redundancy settings by clicking on “Redundancy” on the left pane (it is located at near bottom). System redundancy will be disabled by default, click to change the “Enable” setting to “True” as shown in screenshot below. You might need to set to enable Database Synchronization and Tag Synchronization as well.
Add Redundancy Peers
After that, click on “Peers” from the left pane (under Redundancy) to reveal the Peers table. From this table, we shall add in all the participated redundancy peers in this system. This includes both primary server and all standby server(s). The screenshot below shows an example project with one primary server and two standby servers. Ranking number indicates the server role, 1 = primary, 2 = secondary, and etc. Other than that, Peer Address is another compulsory field, you shall fill it with the particular server’s IP address.
Setup Database Link Connection
Next, specify the database on the “Connection String” column in Peers table. Similar to report or log database, click on the […] button for each database row to prompt the Data Link Properties dialog and setup the connection to your database. In short words, if there are total 3 peers servers, then you will need to create 3 databases in each of the server, then configure their data links in the Peer table.
Lastly, you just need to make sure all the peers servers are connected to each other in the network. Then when everything is ready, click to run the project.
When such a scenario happens where primary server is down or disconnected, the role to perform operation and tasks like reporting or logging will be taken over by the secondary server (Ranking number = 2). Thus no interruption will occur even if any of the server is down.
Download Ecava IGX today and configure redundancy in the easiest way to ensure zero system interruption.