Co-authored by Roland Wagner, CODESYS.
Virtualization is nicely accepted in enterprise IT. Creating digital variations of computing assets comparable to servers and storage, permits the consolidation of a number of bodily assets right into a single digital setting. This enables for extra environment friendly utilization of {hardware} and higher useful resource administration. The worth derived consists of decreased capital expenditures, decrease upkeep prices, improve flexibility and improved cybersecurity.
Nonetheless, virtualization will not be so prevalent in industrial environments. Industrial Automation and Management Programs (IACS) {hardware} assets in these environments, comparable to Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Industrial PCs (IPC), and Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), have existed as discrete assets. With digitization, the variety of such {hardware} assets has risen quickly and so has the time and expense of monitoring, updating, and troubleshooting, which might require prolonged downtimes and productiveness losses. A further consideration is Business 4.0 that will increase the quantity of compute assets in manufacturing techniques with knowledge assortment and evaluation.
IACS compute property might be virtualized to reap its advantages, however it requires particular issues. Manufacturing processes are considerably extra delicate than IT processes to community points like delay, latency, jitter, and packet loss.” Since virtualization removes direct or shut connectivity of compute property with the managed machines, the community should step up and cling to stricter efficiency necessities.
Why virtualization on the manufacturing facility flooring?
Virtualization can deliver a number of advantages in industrial sectors. Producers can consolidate PLCs, IPCs, HMIs, Gateways, and different bodily compute assets at the moment on their manufacturing facility flooring onto native digital machines which run on a hyperconverged compute and storage infrastructure. Current PCs and workstations (IPCs and HMIs) might be changed by skinny purchasers with a smaller footprint linked to the corresponding digital desktop. Digital PLCs (vPLC) operating within the hyperconverged infrastructure would interface with the sensors, actuators, and machines they management through the converged community. This association has many benefits:
- Scalable and agile operations: Virtualization permits producers to simply scale their operations by including or eradicating digital machines as required. It additionally facilitates the deployment of latest purposes or updates with out disrupting manufacturing processes. Adapting to altering circumstances, product redesigns, and many others., is simpler by updating working parameters in software program IACS.
- Elevated safety: Eradicating discrete {hardware} from the manufacturing facility flooring minimizes the potential avenues that an attacker can exploit to achieve unauthorized entry to manufacturing property and processes. Virtualization can enhance the safety of IACS by isolating vital management techniques. By separating networks and implementing safety measures on the virtualization layer, producers can reduce the chance of unauthorized entry or malware propagation.
- Improved catastrophe restoration: Virtualization permits for environment friendly backup, replication, and restoration of digital machines, making catastrophe restoration planning and execution extra streamlined. It permits producers to get better from system failures or disasters, lowering downtime and minimizing any affect extra shortly on manufacturing.
- Higher sustainability: Consolidation of compute and storage assets right into a set of central companies helps cut back the whole power necessities. As well as, simpler entry to extra processing knowledge might help improve efficiencies, cut back waste, and decrease power consumption.
- Testing and improvement: Virtualization offers a really perfect setting for testing and improvement actions. Producers can create digital replicas of their manufacturing techniques for testing new software program, configurations, or system updates, guaranteeing they don’t affect the precise manufacturing setting.
In abstract, as Dr. Henning Loeser from Audi (see interview hyperlink under) states, producers can transfer from a mannequin the place they purchase a brand new “field” to get extra options within the plant to 1 the place they purchase new software program to get extra options.
Determine 1. From direct wired to virtualized management techniques powered by CODESYS
What are the networking necessities for IACS virtualization?
IACS virtualization requires particular networking necessities to make sure the dependable and safe operation of virtualized techniques. Some key networking issues for IACS virtualization embody:
- Assist for tunneling Layer 2 protocols: Virtualization of IACS strikes PLCs with direct or a easy Layer 2 connection to managed gear, to a knowledge heart, which necessitates traversal by way of routers, requiring Layer 3 communication. Nonetheless, since a number of fashionable management protocols function at Layer 2, these protocols have to be tunneled as payload in Layer 3 packets to keep away from giant, cumbersome, and fragile VLAN deployments.
- Enhancements in redundancy: A resilient community helps protect manufacturing continuity by sustaining excessive availability, eliminating packet loss, and guaranteeing steady communications even throughout failure of particular person elements.
- Excessive bandwidth: The community gear and infrastructure have to be able to supporting the next bandwidth and corresponding throughput to deal with the quantity of visitors that may be anticipated to extend as soon as virtualization locations extra packets on the community.
- Determinism: QoS mechanisms must be carried out to prioritize and be sure that vital management system visitors is given larger precedence over non-critical visitors. This helps stop delays or interruptions in real-time management communications in a deterministic method and supply constant networking expertise for the IACS purposes.
- Visibility, safety, and entry: The manufacturing community ought to assist robust in-depth safety measures to guard the virtualized IACS setting. This could embody built-in safety sensors designed to observe and analyze IACS visitors, robust entry controls, and efficient segmentation to keep up zones of belief and reduce malware propagation. Community safety must be thought of at each the virtualization layer and the bodily community layer. Furthermore, the community ought to present zero-trust community entry (ZTNA) for workers and different personnel to securely log into manufacturing property for normal monitoring and upkeep.
- Scalability and adaptability: The community infrastructure must be scalable to accommodate the rising calls for on virtualized techniques. This consists of contemplating elements comparable to community capability, scalability of switches and routers, and the flexibility so as to add, take away, and reconfigure digital machines as wanted.
- Community monitoring: Steady monitoring of the community infrastructure is vital to detect and reply to any anomalies or safety incidents promptly. Community monitoring instruments and methods might help establish efficiency points, community bottlenecks, or potential safety breaches.
Cisco and CODESYS collectively allow IACS virtualization
Cisco industrial networking incorporates superior improvements that may assist virtualize IACS property. Cisco merchandise and options in networking, administration, computing, and safety present the idea of this virtualization.
Determine 2: Architectural schematic for management techniques virtualization
Catalyst Industrial Ethernet switches present high-capacity packet switching and lossless resiliency required for uninterrupted connectivity of IACS gear. Coupled with their assist for industrial protocols, resiliency options, edge-compute capabilities, safety sensing and making use of or implementing segmentation by way of entry management, make them the commercial switches of selection.
Cisco Catalyst Middle, the community administration platform, directs all capabilities of the community from onboarding units, configurations, efficiency monitoring, proactive troubleshooting, entry insurance policies, and many others., and ensures that the community is at all times prepared.
Cisco Identification Companies Engine (ISE) is a complete safety coverage administration platform that’s used to make sure safe community entry and implement safety insurance policies. It permits organizations the management over who can entry their community and what assets they’ll entry.
Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient operating inside Cisco industrial networking gear offers visibility to establish linked property, community visitors, and safety vulnerabilities. Utilizing this degree of visibility, you possibly can outline zones and conduits as per ISA/IEC 62443 and use ISE, Catalyst Middle, and Cisco industrial switches to implement segmentation.
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) brings collectively compute, networking, and storage in a single system to energy your purposes, together with virtualization. As in comparison with conventional servers which can be monolithic, complicated to deploy, and much more complicated to adapt to workload calls for, UCS is a unified system on which you’ll provision and stability assets to fulfill virtualization workloads simply.
The CODESYS Improvement System is an built-in improvement system (IDE) in accordance with IEC 61131-3 for programming the management logic and incorporates varied textual and graphical editors. Further capabilities might be configured within the CODESYS Improvement System, e.g., person interfaces/HMI screens, fieldbus and I/O configuration, safety-relevant logic capabilities, knowledge change with varied different members within the community, in addition to coordinated movement management techniques or robotic kinematics.
Time to get began is now
Admittedly, virtualization of IACS will not be mainstream, and it will not be in your radar fairly but. However with all the advantages it could possibly provide, it’s simple to see how it will likely be a gamechanger quickly. In reality, Audi, the German producer of technologically superior luxurious automobiles has embraced virtualization and is reworking its manufacturing traces. Watch Dr. Henning Löser, head of Manufacturing Labs, Audi, explains why Audi turned to Cisco industrial IoT options to create its next-generation good factories. It’s not too early to begin laying the networking basis for the way forward for manufacturing.
In case you are visiting SPS IPC Drives 2023, that runs from November 14-16 in Nuremberg, Germany, don’t miss the joint Cisco and CODESYS demonstration of digital controllers in manufacturing environments within the CODESYS sales space (#677 in corridor 7).
For extra info on this or another subject associated to manufacturing automation, please schedule a free, no-obligation, dialog with one in every of our specialists.
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