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Industrial Application Server
High-Availability Features
The Wonderware® Industrial Application Server was designed to accommodate the high-availability needs of today’s supervisory control environments. There are several features built into the product that increase availability. They include:
Data Loss Prevention
The Industrial Application Server has a Store and Forward capability such that, if for any reason a separate historian node were to fail or lose communications with the Industrial Application Server, historical data would be buffered locally in the Industrial Application Server until the historian server node goes back online.
Load Balancing
The Industrial Application Server is a distributed system by design. Therefore, the failure of any one node would not cause the entire application to fail.
Cost-Effective Redundancy
Traditionally, supervisory system redundancy has required complicated scripting and programming. The Industrial Application Server offers a truly flexible and cost-effective solution for supervisory and networked SCADA redundancy. A supervisory node can be backed up by another dedicated computer, or two supervisory nodes can back each other up. This ability to mix and match redundancy configurations, which is possible because of the distributed nature of the ArchestrA architecture, sets FactorySuite A² products apart from other industrial products on the market.
Application Engines are the key to the Industrial Application Server’s redundancy capabilities. An Application Engine is a scan-based engine that hosts and executes Automation Objects, which are the basic building blocks of the ArchestrA architecture. Application Engines can be configured to stand alone or for redundancy, simply by checking a configuration box. Once configured, the primary engine is deployed to one computer and serves as a back-up to another. As objects execute on the primary engine, data values are simultaneously synchronized between the primary and backup computers. If the primary computer fails or loses contact with the network, the redundant Application Engine picks up processing where the primary left off. What makes this arrangement so flexible is that the redundant engine can be located on any computer, including another supervisory station. One supervisory node can back up another, while at the same time hosting a live supervisory process.
Warm Restarts via Platform Checkpointing
On a periodic basis, an ArchestrA® platform engine will checkpoint all configuration data to the local computer node’s hard drive. In the event of a node failure, when the node re-boots, the platform and all of its objects will start up and immediately go to the previous scan state.
Fault Tolerance
For customers who absolutely need high system and computer availability, we have partnered with Stratus Technologies and qualified our Industrial Application Server and IndustrialSQL Server™ historian on the Stratus® ftServer® family, ftServer 3300 Series fault-tolerant server. With this solution, no matter what hardware faults are incurred, you are ensured uptimes that are field-proven at 99.9998%.
