How can you set up a high-availability server operation in production without having to rely on constant support from the central IT department?

[Ulrich]

The initial situation is as follows: Different consumer products are manufactured in discrete production at one location. There is a central energy management system that burdens the production areas with the costs of the actual energy consumption. However, billing is called into question because central IT does not guarantee continuous operation of the corresponding software applications.

Energy management is faced with the question of how it can take over the operation of applications and servers on its own, without having to employ additional IT specialists.

Ultimately, energy management chose a solution consisting of the existing software application based on Wonderware's System Platform and a Stratus Technologies ftServer system. The main arguments were the ease of use and high availability of the ftServer system as well as the smooth migration of existing applications from previous physical machines to virtual machines in a VMware vSphere environment.

If you are in a similar situation and/or interested in further details, please send me a  message.

Ulrich Lenz

(Stratus Technologies, www.stratus.com)

[JeromeFirmin]

Hi, interesting indeed. Do you have some customer references you can share within the community ?

[Ulrich]

@JeromeFirmin 

of course we do have customer references (https://www.stratus.com/solutions/platforms/ftserver/). Some of them have agreed to publish a reference story (i.e. AluNorf, Water Authority Duesseldorf) which I could send via e-mail. In general our customers have been looking for a high available solution to protect their production. After they have decided themselves for a Stratus solution and they were asked what are the most remarkable benefits of the  solution, the first answer is: Easiness of use. They like the independence from IT specialists, because the whole complexity of the redundant solution is hidden in the system architecture. The maintenance staff do not need special knowledge about that technology. The management of the server is as easy as dealing with a single, non redundant standard system. In case one part fails, the system keeps up running without any interruption. The broken part (even it is CPU, memory or something else) could be exchanged without stopping the applications. The Stratus ftServer systems are proven technology and available in the market since more than 15 years. But to fit the needs in automation even better, Stratus developed a new system family, called ztC Edge - (zero touch computing), which combines the benefits of the ftServer systems with the ruggedized design of industrial PCs https://www.stratus.com/solutions/platforms/ztc-edge/ . If you are interested about these too, please send me a note.

Ulrich Lenz

(www.stratus.com)

[Evren]

Hi @Ulrich 

Could you please touch base for the solutions? I have a few projects on-the-go and would like to acquire more information.