Virtualisation project: A platform for change

Scott Bader has more than 650 employees at manufacturing sites worldwide. It manufactures, sells and distributes a wide range of synthetic resins and polymers to several different markets.

The company's SCADA platform has been obsolete for several years and official technical support for this system was withdrawn in 2012. This meant all of Scott Bader’s machines were running Windows 2000 Server, an obsolete operating system now unsupported by Microsoft. Replacements and spares for the hardware could no longer be reliably sourced.

The ageing hardware environment was being pushed to its limits daily, maintenance costs for the system were rising and their reliability was declining. Scott Bader was also finding it increasingly hard to find personnel qualified to repair the older machines. Failures in the night or at weekends left the company with no access to technicians or hardware spares, causing production to halt.

These factors increased the risk of downtime and exposure to security vulnerabilities — a significant expense for any manufacturing facility, especially a process plant.

Solution:

Industrial automation expert Exabyte Solutions suggested virtualising the system and turned to its strategic partner, SolutionsPT, to deliver the architecture platform. SolutionsPT’s System Architecture team identified the resource needed for the optimum operation of the virtual machines and recommended a robust fault tolerant platform – Stratus’ Fault Tolerant Server (ftServer) – to be combined with ThinManager as an availability solution for the deployment of critical industrial applications.

Stratus ftServer is designed to keep applications up and running with no downtime or data loss. Leveraging the latest Intel processor technology and supporting Windows, Linux and virtualisation technology VMware, ftServer’s always-on capabilities are achieved with advanced lockstep technology and real-time management and monitoring. Crucially, ftServer is easily installed and is serviced by system-generated replacement parts ordering.

In partnership with SolutionsPT’s architecture team, Exabyte Solutions virtualised Scott Bader’s system using VMWare deployed on the Stratus ftServer, enabling it to continue running its existing software programmes on a virtualised fault tolerant server. 

Outcome:

The virtualisation of Scott Bader’s system effectively addressed the hardware obsolescence of its legacy servers and operator client PCs, allowing the company to kick off its long-term migration plans while maintaining business as usual. The Stratus ftServer was an appropriate solution as it provided an always-on platform allowing staff to focus on production. Used in conjunction with ThinManager, it provided a robust, secure solution for managing Scott Bader’s system which required minimal engineering.

Tony Mannion at SolutionsPT, said: “Since the implementation of the virtualisation project, Scott Bader has experienced 100% uptime and the task of managing the environment has been significantly simplified since migrating away from the legacy hardware. The operating systems remain the same and the same applications continue to run for now. In the long term, the project has provided a building block for an overall migration to a fully modernised environment. Our solution is allowing the company to reduce the overall cost of managing system operations, whilst simultaneously improving plant reliability and availability due to having a more flexible production platform.”

Scott Bader’s Roger Sage said: “Our main concern was the reliability of our hardware, and the time taken to re boot all systems when it did crash. With a virtualised system, one of the key benefits for us is having the security of dual servers. Achieving 100% uptime is a fantastic step forward for us.”