Anyone using Stratus FTserver ?

I'm virtualizing a water treatment plant. While the IT hardware cycle is 3-5 years, to my mind that's really not practical for this kind of installation. So I'm looking for longer term hardware. Stratus FTServer is the only hardware I'm currently aware of that has a longer lifespan of 8-10 years.

Anyone with any experience with these? Or any alternatives.

The Dell VxRail system that replaced the M3000 and VRTX that a different plant has is so expensive for something that will enter EOL in 3 years. Sure you can buy more support but...

I appreciate candor, If all that works now is a 3-5 year hardware cycle for a plant that is not data driven, feel free to tell me I'm a boomer and get with the times.

If your looking for IPCS or Servers with a longer life span , Beckhoff make IPCs with Xenon CPUs. They will support for many years.

We have a Stratus FT on one of our assets and although "Stable" we have had a few anomalies with it that have been put down to "Single Upset Events" by Stratus Support

https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8

I'm looking to put 6 server VM's on this machine. SQL, Historian, SCADA etc. and stop using single server hardware for each app.

Do you recall what the anomalies were or did?

I'm running a Stratus (the fully redundant one). It's running two FTView instances and a total of... off the top of my head 8 VMs. The Historian isn't on this server though. It's just Data, HMI, DC and Operator Workstations that we're virtualizing with Thin Manager.



So far works great, although I'd spend a good time planning the network and use of the network ports per VM. The previous incumbent disregarded this and we have all machines connected to the same hardware port. Which is something I need to fix, but haven't had the time just yet to do.



They can also be monitored remotely by Stratus for a fee, although I'm not keen on that. The state of the Stratus can be monitored via SNMP. We use Kepware, but if I'd defined the project we'd use Zabbix or something similar instead.

Are you not running the historian on it because it can't or you just chose not to for business reasons?

Is the port choked or you are concerned about a single failure point?

We use these: https://selinc.com/products/3355/.
Our OT network is air gapped. We looked at Stratus but they required an internet connection for remote monitoring.
The SEL has a 10 year warranty and 300 Year MTBF.

I just went to a training class on FTservers and the new panel mounted servers. Seem like nice hardware, just don't know if my customer is going to shell the big money for them. They have 28 RSView32 PC out in the plant now and they die on a regular basis. Have started using new Win10 PCs running the RSView32 on a VM using VMWare Player.


Basically I would have one FTServer in the Computer room rack for Domain, Thin Manager, SQL, VantagePoint and Historian. Then 3 sets of Their zTC Edge servers for 10 thin clients each. Those would be mounted in 3 key areas of the plant in the PLC panels or in a new panel.

TheWaterboy said:

Are you not running the historian on it because it can't or you just chose not to for business reasons?

Click to expand...

The guy above the previous incumbent wanted OSI PI in the OT side to be accessible to the office staff. Which I agree, since the benefits are great, but it makes it harder to create trends for the operators.



The previous incumbent actually didn't want this configuration, probably wanted two instances (which would be expensive, but nicer to work with).

TheWaterboy said:

Is the port choked or you are concerned about a single failure point?

Click to expand...

It's coming to the limit to the point that I had to dial down Veeam to run backups as slow as possible. Again, with 7 or 8 physical ports and the virtual networking abilities of ESXi, it's possible to get it better. It's just that I need more time to be able to do it. :/

Thanks for the info folks.