Emerson Exchange 365

Real problems with virtualization in DeltaV?

Hi everyone!

I heard many good things about virtualization nowadays.

Virtualization is providing the ability to run more than one VM software operating system (OS) on a single hardware platform, allowing one physical computer to be more utilized as many virtual computers. Each VM operate independently.

It will reduce costs for hardware/servers/ and provide less space for server racks, but what is disadvantages for virtualization?

Can someone share your experience?

• virualization
• vm
• ICSS
• virtulmachines
• DeltaV

Marlen Osmanov

• 27 Apr 2020 6:22 PM
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2 Replies

• Youssef.El-Bahtimy

  

  • 27 Apr 2020 10:48 PM

  The only disadvantages I have seen is sheer complexity and the need for skill sets of responsible stakeholders to advance in kind. In addition, when considering software licensing, you are going to have additional costs incurred to license your hypervisor host systems. Of course you'll save on physical hardware, electric and cooling costs, so it should work out. Having a set of clustered hosts replicating the guest machines improves high availability of the underlying systems but again, OS licensing costs essentially double (Microsoft wants a license for the hot spare in addition to the live replicant when using Windows servers).
  The Emerson Deltav virtualization products make the learning curve more manageable.

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• Andre Dicaire

  

  • 28 Apr 2020 12:59 AM

  In reply to Youssef.El-Bahtimy:

  Virtualization is certainly a more accessible solution and it can deliver increased availability and optimize the system footprint. But as Youssef points out, reducing the number of computers does not necessarily reduce initial costs. There are new skills to learn for sure, but this is very much manageable in the context of a Control System solution vs a home grown virtualization environment.
  
  Some believe that by virtualizing servers and workstations, the system can be future proofed. To a certain extent, it can extend the life of the system hardware, but no one knows what the future will hold. I look at it this way:
  "Virtualization allows us to run yesterday's software on Today's hardware. It does not ensure that we can run tomorrow's software on today's hardware" .
  
  What I mean by that is today's Virtual host servers and hypervisors support past Operating systems, and older Operating systems have known resource requirements. We can easily stand up VM's for these past OS versions and therefore we can continue to run applications built for those OS's. WE may no longer be able to find computers that will run Windows XP or Windows 7, but we can virtualize these and still run the software applications that need those OS versions.
  
  When it comes to the next version of an OS, the Hyper VIsor may likely require an update in order to support a newer VM OS version. Eventually, the VM host hardware platform may not support the new VM Host hyper visor features, or may require more server resources such as CPU or Memory.
  
  However, the VM Host servers and hyper visor OS will have a longer shelf life than the the VM OS and new hardware will be delayed. Over the long term, we can expect Virtualization to reduce our need to purchase new computers. It will also allow us to run a version of OS longer.
  
  When Microsoft releases a new OS, software manufactures update their drivers to work with the new OS and new Physical hardware features. These new hardware features make the new computers incompatible with the older OS. You soon find you have to update the hardware to accomodate the new OS even if the new features are not in the scope of the Control system.
  
  Another push to virtualization in the control system is the general proliferation of virtualization in the IT world. Companies have expertise on premise with Virtualization. However, it may not be the same technology that the DCS manufacture has adopted. DeltaV supports both VMWare and Hyper-V hyper visors, but only supports Hyper-V for production systems. Emerson provides a specific set of DELL servers and architectures that are fully tested, from the Hyper-V OS to the Microsoft Server and workstation VM's and the RDP client stations. The VRTX hardware is a built for purpose chassis supporting up to 4 blade servers and a native SAN in a fully redundant architecture. You can also set up a VM Host cluster using separate SAN and rack mount servers. High availability architectures reduce system event recovery to a matter of seconds.
  
  Moving to virtualization requires a certain entry cost. You can purchase a single rack mount server and enable Hyper-V to run a handful of virtual machines. Benefit is you buy one server and maximize its use. But now a server failure or stoppage affects all VM's. You can install two servers and spread VM machines across both. Next you can enable replication by linking both these servers as a cluster. If one machine fails, you can recover the affected machines within minutes, as opposed to replacing the server, installing the OS and recover backups. The reduction in recovery time means significant increase in availability. Each of these steps adds to the initial entry cost. The highest level of availability comes with a High availability SAN with two or more servers handling the processing. If a server fails, the VM is immediately moved to the other server reducing recovery to seconds.
  
  In the production environment, availability is extremely important. But not all computers need instant recovery. We can balance all this to control the hardware cost and get the most for the dollar. If we don't have a significant number of VM's at play, we may end up paying more for a Virtualized system over a traditional multi computer architecture. The extra dollars deliver increased availability, which is something we have to assign value to. In most cases we can make use of virtualization to a certain extent where we achieve value for the cost.
  
  In the non-Production environment, High Availability is less of an issue. OTS systems or development systems are less critical so we can use virtualization to minimize hardware and footprint. A single Dell server running Hyper-V can support a dozen workstations and servers. It also reduces power distribution, network requirements and can be very mobil.
  
  We are also able to stand up off line systems on VMWare platforms, including VMWare Worstation. THis allows you to maintain multiple versions of the DCS if you have different versions installed in production systems. You can apply the same DeltaV License on these systems as you can only run one at a time with the license Dongle.
  
  As for the new skills, this is quite manageable. For VMWare, your site IT professionals can assist in standing up VMs of the right OS, and once you have access, they behave just like regular stations. Ask yourself, when a hardware computer has trouble, do you trouble shoot and repair it or is that handed off to a service provider? Very few process engineers and technicians spend time rebuilding hardware computers. It can be the same for the VM environment. Let an IT professional provide the expertise for the VM host environment. Once the VM's are available, the work for supporting the system is pretty much the same.
  
  Emerson created the DeltaV Virtual Studio product to help control system engineers and technicians manage their VM environment themselves. VM Templates are provided that will auto configure them selves with installed DeltaV software. You spend 2 minutes defining a new VM and an automated install process will bring the VM up with software fully configured and the computer ready for download. This ensures consistent software installation versus a 3rd party manual VM creation and soflware installation.
  
  I personally like working with DeltaV Virtual Studio. For production systems, the VRTX architecture delivers value in initial cost for systems with a dozen or so computers.
  
  One more point. Youssef mentioned that Microsoft requires licensing of servers and there replicant. This is true for Server2016 OS VM's. However, one of the main reasons we use a physical server is for the RAID 10 security and disk storage for history and configuration databases. In a VM environment, a Workstation computer can provide the DeltaV Functionality. We can stand up fewer Server OS VM's and use workstations for Application stations. Sever OS is needed on the Pro Plus if VCAT is licensed (requires full SQL Server) and for RD servers. The WIndows 10 VM get the benefit of server CPU's, Memory speed and Disk storage. The main difference between a Client OS (windows 10) and Server OS (Server 2016) is that the windows 10 OS has more support for the User interaction, such as Sound and video cards. There is also a difference in how a Server handles low level interrupts. From a DeltaV perspective the Windows 10 OS is fully supported to run the historian and OPC servers. So maybe we don't need as many Servers in a VM versus a physical hardware architecture.

  Andre Dicaire

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