The benefits of virtualization apply to the IT enterprise and industrial automation including:

• Application load-balancing.
• Decreased energy consumption and footprint.
• Extended lifecycles and more.
• Hardware consolidation.
• High availability.
• Improved uptime.
• Increased fault tolerance.
• Rapid disaster recovery.

A complete virtual solution consists of software and hardware components.

Typical virtualization architectures consist of physical components including servers (hosts), storage arrays, Ethernet networks, a management PC, and desktop clients.

Considerations for Designing a Solution

• Review and discuss the following items with plant managers and vendors before investing in a solution:
  • Server and storage sizing
  • Network configuration
  • OS licensing
  • Virtualization software licensing
  • Engineers can use the characterized data (CPU, Memory, IOPS, etc.) to understand system requirements and specify system components.

Read How To Implement Virtualization In Process Manufacturing from MBT Mag