Honeywell Experion Virtualization Solutions Package

The Experion Virtualization Solutions package is a turnkey blade solution that is optimised for virtualisation and the needs of the process control industry enabling offshore oil and gas, refining and petrochemical customers to increase operations availability and reduce the total cost of ownership of their control system, saving them millions of dollars annually.

By applying virtualisation to industrial control systems, processing plants and refineries can simplify their computing environments, streamline maintenance and reliability, and reduce the amount of hardware space needed at facilities such as floating offshore oil rigs, where space is at a premium.

Virtualisation is a major productivity and efficiency tool for commercial and industrial operations. Process controls typically require separate servers to support different applications - requiring additional space, hardware and significant maintenance costs. Virtualisation allows a single server to simultaneously run multiple operating systems and applications, insulating the operating systems from hardware changes, improving overall server utilisation, simplifying maintenance and reducing costs.

The Experion Premium Platform is based on blade server technology from IBM and reduces set-up time by 90%, generates 40% more energy savings, has 22% greater density than alternative virtualised server platforms and allows recovery from a processor failure in minutes.

Honeywell chose the IBM BladeCenter S to power the Premium Platform because of its highly integrated design especially in the area of storage, and its focus on markets where simplicity is critical.