Schneider Electric has long been a leader in this area and has extended its capabilities here with the release of Wonderware Operations Integration Servers (OI Servers). This next generation of device integration greatly expands Schneider Electric’s connectivity spectrum from the plant floor data layer up to the business and ERP layers. This expanded level of enterprise wide connectivity means that Wonderware OI Servers are positioned to support any industry wide, global IoT and Cloud-ready communication strategy.
With this release, Wonderware’s long history of device integration, which includes support for devices from Allen-Bradley, Bosch Rexroth, Omron, Siemens and, of course, Wonderware, has now been extended to include support for devices from AutomationDirect, Bacnet, Beckhoff, Codesys (e.g., Bosch and Wago), Eaton, GE, Modbus, Mitsubishi and Opto22.
Multiple methods for I/O simulation using Wonderware Simulation DAServer and Wonderware Application Server objects will be demonstrated at the Wonderware by Schneider Electric 2015 Conference in the session “Simulating I/O & Introduction to Wonderware Operations Integration Servers (TSS-07),” by Gary Alldredge and Dan Scott on Wednesday, September 23 at 8 a.m. in Colonade A/B. Gary and Dan will illustrate how to use these technologies for project testing, problem replication and customer demo applications.
They will also review key features of the new Wonderware OI servers release, including:
- The ability to run multiple instances of a server in a single node with a single license, allowing users to consolidate scattered architectures into fewer nodes. This feature also increases system scalability as users can now run multiple, completely independent instances of the same driver in a single node.
- Elimination of single points of failure by running multiple instances of the same node. By doing this, any potential problems that may affect one driver instance are isolated to just that instance. This helps increase throughput as the parallel, independent processing of I/O by each individual driver results in higher overall throughput per driver and node.
- Decreased downtime. Communication uptime is increased because configuration changes that require driver restarts only impact that single instance, thereby allowing other drivers to continue to run unaffected. This single node side-by-side upgrade ability also allows users to continue running the previous driver version while adding a new version of the same driver protocol. This means you can keep the old version running while you add new versions without having to change the existing version. The bottom line is this means you can continue growing your automation architecture as your business requires without disruptions.
