PROCESSING www.processingmagazine.com AUGUST 2017 Process Control AUGUST 2017

FEATURED PRODUCTS Compact air cylinders Bimba’s compact air cylinders, the Blue and Improved Flat-1, were redesigned to offer the most recent advances in design technology. The cylinders feature 19 product enhancements such as permanent grease lubrication, improved bumper design and hard chrome- PROCESSINGMAGAZINE.com plated piston rods with an option for stainless steel. For applications in which space is tight, the cylinders offer durability and precision.

Bimba www.bimba.com 502

Industrial diaphragm COVER story Wilden has designed new Chem-Fuse diaphragms specifically for indus- PAGE 10 trial applications. Incorporating the core patented technology of the Wilden Energy Efficiency integral piston Pure-Fuse diaphragm, the new Chem-Fuse diaphragm elimi- nates the potential leak point at the outer piston as well A three-step approach as outer piston abrasion. This is crucial for industrial to executing a compre- applications that pump abrasive or dangerous fluids. hensive energy manage- The diaphragm design also offers easy cleanability ment strategy includes for faster changeovers between products. implementing an online

performance solution Image courtesy of Schneider Electric Wilden with visualization tools. www.wildenpump.com 503 Diaphragm valve actuator The Alfa Laval Unique DV-ST UltraPure actuator fits the complete range of Alfa standard dia- BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCTS phragm valves. It simplifies inventory management, and regardless of the process or application, the same actuator can be stocked as a spare part for all Alfa Laval Unique DV-ST UltraPure diaphragm valves, including cast, forged or block, and autoclave duties. The actuator withstands high temperatures required for sterilization and operates at working pressures up to 10 Bar (6 Bar TFM/EPDM).

Alfa Laval www.alfalaval.com 500 Did you implement or introduce a groundbreaking product this year? Explosion-proof light Enter Processing’s 2017 Breakthrough Products of the Year awards, which rec- The UL-listed, LED explosion-proof light from ARCHON Industries Inc. is used for process vessel ognize product, technology and service observation. Model EX99-LED is designed for use in hazardous locations and provides bright solutions that have made significant con- illumination of vessel contents using high-power CREE COB LED technology. The unit uses tributions to the process industries within high-grade optics and operates continuously, offering high reliability and the past 12 months. Nomination deadline: safety even in harsh environments. It is offered with mounting brackets Sept. 29. or a tri-clamp mounting adapter. processingmagazine.com/ ARCHON Industries Inc. breakthrough-products-awards www.archonind.com 501 Delivering flexibility PR_0817_Cover.indd 1 7/28/17 9:51 AM & saving downtime using virtualization producer reaps the benefits of a

virtualized control system network | By Brian Goschka & Kevin Kemp, Emergent BioSolutions

igh availability is important for all both a pre- and post-exposure setting, it is essen- The case for change organizations in the process industry, tial that Emergent maintains the ability to deliver For years, Emergent had been relying on a H but for a company tasked with sup- a reliable supply to individuals whose occupa- DeltaV distributed control system (DCS) from plying an essential vaccine to the U.S. govern- tion or other activities place them at high risk of Emerson Automation Solutions. The engineers’ ment, high availability simply is not optional. exposure to the disease. familiarity with the system made it a critical For Emergent Operations Lansing To maintain its essential commercial license, part of their everyday functionality. When ver- LLC, a subsidiary of Emergent BioSolutions Inc., Emergent facilities, employees, and equipment sion 12 was released, it contained several fea- the ability to produce and deliver high-quality face strict compliance regulations. To facilitate tures that the company found advantageous. product on time is a matter of national security. compliance, availability and reliability of its con- Normally, they would download the software, Emergent produces and supplies the anthrax trol system is essential. The company cannot perform the upgrades and validate the chang- vaccine, BioThrax (), afford unexpected problems that cause data es; however, their server racks were filled with in the United States. Because BioThrax is the collection or production outages. To maintain legacy equipment that was unlikely to be able to only U.S. Food and Drug Administration-licensed uptime, automation engineers keep a robust support the newest version of their control sys- vaccine for the prevention of anthrax disease in development server environment running tem. Moreover, the Windows operating systems so that they can test any changes to the sys- tem before implementation, to ensure that software upgrades and changes won’t cause unanticipated problems.

The Emergent BioDefense Operations Lansing LLC manufacturing facility All images courtesy of Emergent BioSolutions Virtualization also provides access to a snap- shotting feature that allows end users to take a picture in time of any server state. The snap- shot can be used to several different outcomes. If users suspect that an impending change might cause a problem, having a snapshot allows them to instantly roll back any changes, returning everything to a working state. The snapshot feature can also be used for develop- ment environments, for example, moving an image of the current system to new hardware, where users can make changes or implement patches or upgrades, and see what impact the Emergent uses its fermentation processes change has on the environment in a risk-free to produce the anthrax vaccine, BioThrax development state. Now, nearly every change (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed) Emergent engineers make is implemented only after it has been tested on a snapshot run- “A virtualization solution offered many features needed, but ning on their development server. In addition, hardware and software are that weren’t available in a traditional server environment.” decoupled going forward, therefore, elimi- nating compatibility problems in future used were no longer supported. With system When they priced out their options and upgrades. Hardware and software upgrades requirements chaining hardware and software discussed their plan with Emerson, a virtual will be cheaper and easier in the future as well. together, they found themselves running serv- environment was recommended. The con- Software can be upgraded without changing ers (some operating as workstations) with oper- trol system network had reached the size and the hardware, and vice versa. Moreover, all of ating systems that were obsolete. scope where a virtual solution was effectively these changes can be made without taking the In a sense, they felt trapped: The old hardware the same cost as a standard hardware solu- servers offline, avoiding production outages could not be replaced because new equipment tion. A virtualization solution offered many during upgrades. wouldn’t run the required operating system features needed, but that weren’t available in Another benefit to virtualization is that it has for their control system. On the other hand, a traditional server environment. By choosing dramatically reduced the organization’s hard- they could not update the software, because it a virtual solution, they could meet all of their ware footprint. The original configuration had wouldn’t run on the old operating system. As needs effectively at the same price point. 10 operator workstations that ran on physical a result, they found themselves making costly server hosts, accessed from KVM switches in repairs to old, outdated equipment, spending far The benefits of virtualization the field. In addition, there were seven other more effort than necessary to keep the servers Automation engineers said they immediately servers. These 17 total servers took up four and workstations running. saw the benefits of a virtualized control sys- full-size racks, while consuming a great deal of The automation engineers concluded the only tem network. The most important advantage power and producing significant heat (result- solution was to change the hardware and the offered by virtualization was the addition of ing in increased costs to cool the server room). software at the same time, but this came at a high availability to the control system and With a virtual solution, more machines were cost. Making such a sweeping change meant historians. When a hardware-based server able to be run on only five physical server hosts taking the control system offline to make the fails, redundancy is limited or nonexistent. and only two full-size racks, with field opera- switch. This would result in costly downtime Everything shuts down while a new hardware tors accessing their workstations on virtual for the organization. With proper planning, they server is rebuilt. In addition to the time that machines using thin clients in the field. knew the outage was something they could it takes to get new hardware up and running, manage, but a problem remained: Were they simply waiting for new parts or machines to Everyday successes going to have to face such an outage every time arrive can lead to lengthy outages, resulting in The new virtualized system has proven suc- they wanted to upgrade hardware or software? failure to meet customer commitments and cessful in day-to-day operation of the plant. They knew they had to find a better way. lost revenue. The redundancy of the built-in high availabil- With the new virtual solution, workstation ity has been a key benefit on the plant floor, as Finding a solution in virtualization and server failures are a lesser concern, as virtual operators know they can now rely on the appli- Initially, they planned to do a like-for- machines can be easily recreated in minutes on cations they need to be available at all times. like swap on all of the hardware and then another host. Because machines can be moved As a result of comparability and trial runs upgrade the software at the same time. It automatically by the high availability manage- using the new system, Emergent estimates seemed that swapping the hardware and ment software with just a reboot of the server that the effective elimination of unplanned software in this manner would be the fast- or computer, users should see little or no down- outages will save tens of thousands, if not est solution, and would, therefore, save the time when a server is moved between hosts, as millions, of dollars in lost production. In addi- most money as a result of reduced down- opposed to the hours-long outages that could tion, the time saved from having employees time during the upgrade. occur with traditional hardware servers. troubleshooting and documenting hardware failures will save thousands of dollars, as will day-to-day operations. On the production DeltaV™ is a trademark of Emerson. All other brand, removing the need to source equipment to floor, they can see the results, as uptime has product, service and feature names of trademarks repair aging hardware. improved significantly, and no longer worry are the property of their respective owners. Not all the benefits of the virtualized system about technology failures impacting their are quantifiable. In one instance, a worksta- ability to deliver the critical anthrax vac- Kevin Kemp is a senior auto- tion was experiencing significant technical cine. Just as important, however, is that the mation engineer at Emergent issues. The problem could not be replicated virtualized solution gives them flexibility for BioSolutions. He has over 30 years on a test system, and configuration changes the future, allowing them to grow the control of automation experience and has on the live system had no effect. Fortunately, system on-demand in order to meet needs. been with Emergent for more than nine years. operators had access to the snapshot feature Because hardware and software no longer of the virtualized environment, which allowed will be chained together, they won’t have to Brian Goschka is a senior automation them to quickly and easily revert to an earlier worry about being stuck without an upgrade engineer at Emergent BioSolutions with snapshot that was validated and documented, path when new applications deliver features more than 20 years of experience in allowing them to move forward without addi- that are critical to production or compli- the automation field. He has been with tional testing and documentation. ance. “The flexibility of virtualization has Emergent for four years. In addition, whenever Emergent or a vendor been liberating, and it has delivered us the makes changes to the production system, they flexibility that we need to meet regulatory Emergent BioSolutions always do a dry run of the changes on a snapshot requirements and our customer’s targets for www.emergentbiosolutions.com on their development system, and run all valida- production,” Emergent automation engineers tion protocols before anything goes live. By keep- report. Emerson Automation Solutions ing snapshots on the development system that www.emerson.com are as close as possible to the production envi- Author note: BioThrax® and any and all ronment, operators can be confident that any Emergent BioSolutions Inc. brand, product, implemented changes or updates will work. service and feature names, logos and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of Why virtualize? Emergent BioSolutions Inc. or its subsidiar- Emergent’s move to virtualization has deliv- ies in the United States or other countries. All ered a number of significant benefits for rights reserved.

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