Scada Hosting Solution

[cire3621]

I work for an electrical/automation company for the oil and gas industry and a lot of our independent companies cannot afford their own scada system or do not have enough sites to justify having their own and have asked if we could host their data. We resolved some of that with Idec Plc's with built in web servers that allows them to log directly into the plc. We would rather just host their data ourselves on our own dedicated web server. I have ClearScada and we are system integrators for them, but it is not really meant for hosting multiple companies and is far to expensive for most of the independents to own and host themselves. Does anyone know of any scada hosting software meant for use with multiple companies, or have a solution to make this happen? I know their is a company called wellkeeper in northern New Mexico that hose multiple companies data and we are based out of southern New Mexico, but they had their own software and equipment developed.

 

[Ken Roach]

I'm generally dismissive of "I haven't done it but it sounds right" posts, but your business sounds like it's ideal for Inductive Automation's Ignition software. It's browser-launched and the company is much more oriented towards large distributed systems than small, tightly-controlled systems. I use it on embedded Linux boxes (not the target market!) because of the Java and Python features.

http://www.inductiveautomation.com/

Search the website using the keyword "Cloud" to find their whitepaper on pros/cons of "Cloud Based" systems, since the challenges of multiuser authentication and hosting aren't that dissimilar if the servers are at Amazon or on the desk next to you.

In my understanding you would need multiple Internet-facing IP addresses for your servers, then use DNS (DynDNS is my favorite) to point each customer at their own launch page by name.

IA has a very skilled sales force; do the "web demo" or get in touch with Myron Hoertling at IA.

 

[cire3621]

I believe that you may have just ended so many headaches for me if this works the say it says it does. Love what I am seeing so far. I will definitely be contacting this company. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post.

 

[Dravik]

It is great software.
Some things to keep in mind:
How will you get data from the customer sites to your central location?(Security considerations and whatnot)
Do you need redundancy?(IA can handle that, but you'll need more than 1 server then of course)
Bandwith?(Is your pipe and the customer pipes large enough for correct performance)

 

[cire3621]

I have a T1 Dedicated line at my office. We can use moxa cell IP modems with a VPN hosted through Crossbridge solutions that I would set up on the server. I have already used moxa cell IP modems with the vpn before. Can also radio the information back to our Tower at the office. And the information our customers will be viewing is minimal data. May just host it on a rented maintained server and eliminate the whole mess...that is what Bentek Systems does.


Also this is just a solution for our independent oil and gas operators that are smaller local companies and we will just bill them monthly for them to have online access to their data. The larger companies we just integrate clearscada on their servers for them to host themselves. But to be able to bill the customers monthly for data we are already monitoring out in the field anyways will pay for itself and then just becomes redundant income.

 

[diat150]

I have a system in place already that we use for this purpose. I use Ignition by Inductive Automation, Crossbridge for cell modem support, and we also have Universal Server to talk with essentially any device and also grab EFM archive data from most major flow computer brands. Along with that we offer voice/text/email alarming.

Our user interface is really slick and can be separated by customer so that certain customers can only see some meters or sites. We have one server that has almost 1700 devices (64000 total tags) polling once per hour. We just cranked up a new server that has about 20 devices. We also have setup a cryout device that monitors up to 6 inputs(compressors, well status, etc) and can turn on a cell modem when a state change occurs so that you use less power and data.

If you would like to take a look at what we can offer shoot me a private message.

 

[I is a noob]

Don't know how far it is from you but TCT out of Odessa,TX doest this type of stuff to some extent.

http://www.centerpointenergy.com/services/fieldservices/tct/

You will have to copy and paste as I can't figure out how ot insert a hyperlink on this BlackBerry....

 

[cire3621]

Ive pretty much got all the features we need down with inductive automations software ignition except for 1...I had one of my hardware guys build up a beefy linux server to host the software, apache, SQL, and mail server to send out txt and email alarms...but I was also was wanting to run top view for voice callouts and alarm escalation, and it looks like it only runs on windows...as much as I don't want to, i may just have to turn this first server back into windows 2008...And I am not really sure which version of topview to use...the OPC or the SQL version? Seems like either would work just fine to me...

 

[PLC GURU]

Second, Inductive Automation!

 

[mrmss]

Hi, I happen to work for Serck in the UK where ClearSCADA's origins began. One topology that I can think of is to have their PLCs communicate with the Main server (dual or triple redundancy is just additional servers and licenses away). With all your live telemetry and historic information in one place (and the Main server will handle some of the SMS, Pager and alarm escelation), you could then buy the ClearSCADA client license and enable the small businesses to VPN into the Main server OR have another server which resides on a 'DMZ' or some area of the network where its safe for the small businesses to connect into. On this server you could either give each of the small companies a remote desktop with the ClearSCADA client software on it.

 

[Dravik]

Cire:

In case you'd like to keep those separate, If you server supports it you could run ESXI on the bare metal level and visualize your Linux system. Then just add a windows VM to handle your alarming.
The base license for ESXI is free for what you'd need anyhow.

Ive pretty much got all the features we need down with inductive automations software ignition except for 1...I had one of my hardware guys build up a beefy linux server to host the software, apache, SQL, and mail server to send out txt and email alarms...but I was also was wanting to run top view for voice callouts and alarm escalation, and it looks like it only runs on windows...as much as I don't want to, i may just have to turn this first server back into windows 2008...And I am not really sure which version of topview to use...the OPC or the SQL version? Seems like either would work just fine to me...

 

[cire3621]

mrmss

We are partners with Control microsystems, and I have used clearscada, but it is far to expensive and does not support all the functionality that inductive automation ignition software supports...and the fact that its unlimited users and points for one price is awesome...so we are switching to Inductive Automation Ignition.

 

[cire3621]

Dravik -

I just went ahead and overnighted windows server 2008 and I will just reconfigure the new server so I can run everything on it...will eliminate future headaches.

 

[surferb]

Out of curiosity, how did that project end up going? All Windows or partially Linux, partially Windows?

Dravik -

I just went ahead and overnighted windows server 2008 and I will just reconfigure the new server so I can run everything on it...will eliminate future headaches.

 

[cire3621]

I am using a dedicated Windows 2008 server to host ignition. Very user friendly software and it was really easy to configure and connect to our field devices and databases. I am currently finishing up designing some projects. I don't know Python but am well versed with Sql and it has seemed to do the trick for what we need accomplished.