Learn how to configure redundancy in AVEVA Plant SCADA (CitectSCADA) for high availability, fault tolerance, and uninterrupted plant operations.
Industrial plants demand high system availability — downtime is costly and can affect safety. AVEVA Plant SCADA supports redundancy at multiple levels, ensuring seamless failover between servers and clients. This article explains how to design and implement redundancy effectively.
1. Types of Redundancy in Plant SCADA
- I/O Server Redundancy: Provides a hot-standby server for PLC/RTU communications.
- Alarm Server Redundancy: Ensures alarms are still processed if the primary server fails.
- Trend Server Redundancy: Maintains historical logging during outages.
- Client Redundancy: Operator stations can fail over to backup servers automatically.
2. Configuring I/O Server Redundancy
- Define primary and standby servers in the project.
- Ensure both servers have access to the same PLCs/networks.
- Test failover scenarios (network disconnect, power loss) to validate configuration.
Example: A water utility deployed redundant I/O servers in different racks. When one failed, the standby server took over seamlessly within 3 seconds, preventing operator downtime.
3. Alarm & Trend Redundancy
- Enable redundancy in Citect Studio → Server Properties.
- Ensure alarm and trend databases are replicated or shared.
- Test switchover while acknowledging alarms to confirm no loss of history.
4. Best Practices for Reliable Redundancy
- Use separate physical machines or VMs to avoid single points of failure.
- Synchronize server clocks with NTP to prevent timestamp drift.
- Regularly test failover scenarios during maintenance windows.
Redundancy ensures that Plant SCADA remains online, reliable, and safe even during hardware or network failures.
Master redundancy with expert guidance in Plant SCADA Advanced Training, you’ll design and test high-availability architectures, implement disaster recovery strategies, and optimize redundancy for large-scale deployments.
Register today to gain hands-on redundancy skills that keep your systems running without interruption
