Method of protecting redundant servers coupled to a manufacturing executing system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9696715-B2
Application number	US-201514709665-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 12, 2015
Priority date	May 16, 2014
Publication date	Jul 4, 2017
Grant date	Jul 4, 2017

Abstract

A method protects at least two redundant servers. The redundant servers act as main and shadow interfaces between respectively at least two redundant process servers coupled to a manufacturing execution system and at least two redundant control servers coupled to an automation part. Each of the servers is configured to receive automation data from each of the redundant control servers. A time of receipt and a tag are extracted from the automation data and are registered in a database coupled with the servers. If one of the tags is registered within a predefined delay after the time of receipt of the other tag, the server with the older time of receipt is set up as the main interface and the other server is set up as the shadow interface.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for protecting at least two redundant servers, the redundant servers acting as main and shadow interfaces between respectively at least two redundant process servers coupled to a manufacturing execution system and at least two redundant control servers coupled to an automation part, which comprises the steps of:
configuring each of the redundant servers to receive automation data from each of the redundant control servers;
extracting a time of receipt and a tag from each of the automation data and registering times of receipt and tags in a database coupled with the redundant servers; and
setting one of the redundant servers to function as the main interface and another one of the redundant servers to function as the shadow interface dependent on a time of receipt of the automation data, wherein the one of the redundant servers having the automating data with an older time of receipt is set to function as the main interface and the other one of the redundant servers is set to function as the shadow interface, if one of the tags is registered within a predefined delay after the time of receipt of the other tag.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein if one of the tags is registered later than the predefined delay after the time of receipt of the other tag, the one of the redundant servers with a previous time of receipt is set to function as the main interface and the other one of the redundant servers is set to function as the shadow interface.

Assignees

• Siemens Ag

Inventors

• Pelle Frederic
• Rambeau Olivier
• Castanheira Nuno Rodrigues

Classifications

• Y02P90/10

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• G05B19/4185 Primary

  characterised by the network communication · CPC title

• G05B2219/31372

  Mes manufacturing execution system · CPC title

• Y02P90/12

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• H04L69/40

  for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection (management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06) · CPC title