When failure is not an option

摘要

Steve Flannagan of Citect, explains the need to protect production against SCADA system failure The high level control and monitoring features provided by SCADA systems are fundamental to improving plant efficiency and productivity today and has led to widespread use of the technology in plants and factories. Generally, SCADA systems are highly reliable. However, one aspect of their operation that is often overlooked at the specification stage is redundancy - what happens if the system fails? This question is particularly relevant considering that control systems for both single node and network applications have a single point of failure, meaning that they will break down entirely if one piece of hardware fails. Although most modern computers are designed for reliability, breakdowns do still occur, especially with computers located in harsh environments. Consequently, if some or all of the plant processes are critical, or if the downtime costs are high, redundancy must be incorporated into the system to eliminate failures due to equipment failure.