Playing with PI Web Parts

I've spent some free time at work setting up a basic SharePoint 2010 Server in order to test the functionality of OSISoft's PI Web Parts .

This is my first experience with SharePoint and PI Web Parts, and I'm not very impressed up to now.

Here are my thoughts:

SharePoint is terribly slow

Sharepoint is unbelievably slow. Granted, I have a small VM, but I'm using the default configuration, no bells and whistles. Usability suffers from extreme sluggishness, and I wouldn't want to design pages in SharePoint full-time as my objective in life is to keep a shred of sanity. When I use Web 2.0 apps, I expect Web 2.0 speed. Not cgi-bin-like responsiveness.



Web Parts rely on SVG (and, soon, MS Silverlight)


The "interesting" graphical Web Parts rely on SVG to generate graphics, like the PI Trend Web Part pictured above. Using SVG is not a problem per se, as it is a lightweight format which gives very usable results -- the trend graphics are live, and you can hover over parts of the graphic to get more info dynamically.

However, Internet Explorer is notorious for not supporting SVG natively. Furthermore, there is no alternative to configure these web parts to make static image files... so if you have a locked-down desktop with IE8 (or, even worse, IE6) and have no SVG viewer, you're fucked. The only solution consists of installing an old viewer from Adobe that has not been updated since 2005, and has been unsupported since 2009. Unacceptable in an enterprise environment. Calling the Man to install such a viewer on my laptop would result in the Man saying "no" and laughing his way back to the bank.

What further exacerbates me is OSISoft's commitment to migrate to Silverlight in the future. Deploying Silverlight will be another complex task in a locked-down enterprise environment. Of course, Microsoft already knows how to deal with this: I think they can't bundle Sliverlight with Windows 7 due to antitrust issues, but they will find a way to attach it into the next version of MS Office. So when the Man will decide it's time to upgrade the desktops from Office 1981 to Office 2030, we might get Silverlight as a bonus and be able to see some PI Web Parts. Woo!

In a world where many intranet sites are hardwired to IE6, and nobody wants to risk updating anyone to IE8 (let alone IE9), SVG and Silverlight are critical points that need to be taken care of.

O.

Fun with OSISoft's PI

RRDtool has been a savior as a no-frills data historian, giving folks a free and high quality toolset to store and present time-series data. So when I first saw OSISoft's PI last year, my reaction was Oh no, not an "enterprise" version of RRDTool!

Many know that I'm very critical of expensive software that labels itself as "Enterprise", especially when it ends up not working as expected, assuming it works at all. When paying in the six digits for software, one expects it to at least be good, and provide value. But many times, it's a half-baked product, glued by imbeciles who are led by idiots, which is then sold by a dim-witted sales team who think their target customer base is a bunch of morons. That might be harsh, but it's the way I've felt for a long time with some software companies and their peddlers.

Needless to say, when I started architecting systems based on OSISoft's PI, I had low expectations.

It turns out I was wrong. PI (Plant Information), as its name implies, has roots deep into the Plant, not in the Enterprise. This is a significant difference that must have influenced its design a long way. I can't pinpoint exactly what makes it special, but at the base it's simply elegant and I feel perfectly comfortable when playing with their tools. Everything there looks like it has been put in it for a real purpose, not to show up well in feature comparison chart. A lack of buzzwords like "cloud computing" and "agile enterprise" makes me feel right at home.

There are some problems with OSISoft's suite of products, the top one in my list being the lack of good documentation. The documentation is either extremely high-level or very technical, with few images, there is no "in between" for someone like me who only needs to make a quick proof of concept then leave the implementation details to the IT team. Their vCampus subscription process is also hard to work it. And I'm getting increasingly frustrated with their support site which makes downloading each piece of software or document a tedious, three-step task.

But all these issues went magically away when I was able, in 15 minutes, to set up a mock operator screen for a mock reactor:


I like it when software lets you do things quickly, in a natural way. PI is exactly that. It comes built-in with a few data points, that can help someone quickly assemble a prototype to see its capabilities. I did this screen in PI Processbook. I can use it to show some of my colleagues , at a glance, what PI is all about; an image is worth a thousand words.

Sharepoint is currently being installed in another VM, and my next step will be to try to present data with PI Web Parts. I'd like to see if that Processbook screen can be converted as easily as OSISoft says it can. Geez, Sharepoint has just finished installing. Time to go see if I can pull it off in another 15 minutes.

O.

Integrating IEDs inside your IT infrastructure - Part 1

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



Introduction

This should be a multi-part blog series that will introduce you to the control and data acquisition of substation-grade IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices) all the way to the data center. I'll write it as I have the time. If you have any comments or corrections, feel free to leave me a note.

Being a systems architect, not a control engineer, the emphasis of my writings will be on the IT side. I don't have any deep knowledge in the control field, having been exposed to these technologies only recently. When I tried looking for some information on the internet, there wasn't much to start with except Wikipedia entries that didn't fit together linearly. May this series help anyone who happens to follow my footsteps.


Part 1: It all starts at the IED

Wikipedia defines an IED quite well:

An Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) is a term used in the electric power industry to describe microprocessor-based controllers of power system equipment, such as circuit breakers, transformers, and capacitor banks.

Okay, so let me make my own definition, and it's all IT folks like me ought to know:

An IED is either a sensor that returns data, a control device installed in a substation, or "something that impacts the grid".

All these devices need to provide an interface to communicate back their data, and also some means to be configured by a control engineer or technician. A lot of this stuff have traditionally been relying on the serial RS-232 point-to-point interface (unless you're under 25, you've probably heard of RS-232 before; it is the standard 9-pin or 25-pin serial port on PCs on which you can hook up serial devices). Many IEDs also rely on RS-422 and RS-485 networks which have more features than the basic, low-speed RS-232: RS-422 is a "multi-drop" network, where one sender can be heard by up to 10 slave receivers, while RS-485 is a "multi-point" network that allows up to 32 arbitrary connections.

The upper layer protocol that IEDs use seem to be, a lot of times, Modbus or DNP3. Another interesting fact is that clock synchronization with these devices is often done using the IRIG-B protocol which has a lot more history than the usual (S)NTP protocol many network administrators are already familiar with. For one, IRIG-B can work on serial interfaces.

Many IEDs have recently started to rely on ethernet media and routable TCP/IP networks instead of point-to-point communications. TCP/IP can channel DNP3, Modbus and others, but the IEC 61850 protocol is also slowly becoming a leading standard. Using TCP/IP basically enables you to access the device from anywhere -- a nice feature, but a double-edged sword nonetheless: introducing a routable network in the substation, and hooking up IEDs to it, brings up many obvious security issues that weren't there before.

Remote control and data acquisition from these IEDs could be done using plain modems and dedicated POTS lines. But now that this telecommunication architecture is slowly moving towards routable, high speed IP networks, new ways to remotely manage the substation become available using commoditized IT technology. Many analysis and archiving possibilities spring up once this scattered data is centralized, which involves software that will be unheard of to many IT admins.

We see here that while it all starts at the IED, that IED needs a way to send back its data to the data center. So what once used to be the sole business of the "Control Guys" is also becoming one which also requires some assistance from the "IT Guys".

And yes, as I admitted firsthand at the top of this article, I'm an IT Guy.

O.

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The next article will describe how to concentrate a bunch of IEDs together, and securely send their data to the data center.

Word clouds: a nice way to review your documents

I've recently discovered on Kieren McCarthy's blog a picture of a word cloud. In essence, it's a cloud of words where each word occupies a space relative to its height.

The site Wordle lets you create such clouds for free, with a terrific design. I've pasted my whole architecture documents on this site to check out the results. Here is an example of what it results in:


In the above cloud, a few elements stand out: Acquisition (Data collection), PI, Données (data), PI-SMP, and points (tags). Anyone familiar with PI or Cooper's SMP will easily guess what that document is talking about.

Such clouds can be used to make a pro-looking cover page (or back page) for any official document; in my case, I just hang them in my cubicule. One can also use word clouds hem to size up a document, any document, in a quick glance: By looking at what words have the most weight, it is possible to have a quick idea of the document itself. And yes, it does look really nice.

O.

Thoughts on HP-UX, AIX, and Integrity

Those who know me personally and have been following this blog know that I ditched my HP-UX admin career to become a systems architect in another division at my company. The reasons for this were mostly personal, although maybe 10% of my choice to move on was due to other reasons. Bottom line is that even though I miss the technical side, I'm glad I've made the switch to the "clouds" and became an architect.

I'm now mostly attached to stuff made by Cooper Power Systems and OSISoft, which is fine. Expect the content of this blog to switch to these two vendors over time. HP still has a place too, as I've spent so much time using their products. But here we're not a HP shop; we have some HP products of course, but also IBM, EMC, and other vendors on the floor.

Some HP reps came in this week to show us what was new this year. While I used to be very fond of HP since relying on a limited number of manufacturers was part of my one-sysadmin-for-all strategy, I must now step back and try to be as objective as possible.

That being said, there was the usual presentation about let-HP-shove-its-converged-infrastructure-down your-throat, then a half-hour presentation on Integrity systems (among others) during which I kept my mouth shut. I couldn't help myself thinking what's the future of this great platform. All talk about running Linux and Windows on the platform is now gone, which is a good thing, as we all know it can no longer be an option. Only HP-UX and OpenVMS are left. The BCS rep, knowing my division runs RHEL and AIX, told us to "please challenge us", meaning that we should evalutate HP-UX as a contender as much as possible.

I've worked with HP-UX for 10 years and love it. But, in my opinion, AIX is roughly equivalent. Although I haven't been administering AIX systems for 10+ years, I know enough that it is a mission-critical OS backed by a manufacturer who won't let my company down, same as HP-UX. If we were running Solaris, things would be very different. But for the moment, as an architect, I consider both HP-UX and AIX as equals: these are the last true "Enterprise" UNIX options available.

So, what's left for the Integrity platform? Not much. As AIX is the same as HP-UX at a glance, I can only think that Integrity is the same as POWER systems, give or take. So it's not a bad platform per se, but a niche one for sure.

It's too bad HP lost the big bet they've made on the Itanium. I still remember all the talk about Merced when I started my sysadmin career in the late 90s. Things didn't turn out as expected for sure, but even if HP had stayed on the PA-RISC bandwagon, they would be at the same spot they are right now. That doesn't mean HP-UX has no future - the OS still has a big place in my heart. I can only hope HP will eventually port the HP-UX kernel to x86, or make an HP-UX ecosystem and support infrastructure revolving around a Linux kernel. This is probably the best thing to do to this operating system to ensure its long term viability.

Have any comments? Please leave me feedback.

O.

Announced: An official Cooper EAS web forum

I've been informed that Cooper EAS has to intention to build a community around their grid automation products such as IMS, a process to which I'll be glad to contribute when the time comes.

A first step into building a community is, in my opinion, to set up a web forum. To my surprise, EAS just announced one today. It is available here:

http://216.17.94.116/vbulletin/index.php

There is no DNS name yet, but I'm sure they'll fix this soon. Also note that access is limited to current customers only.

I think that a critical mass of their current customers is mostly interested in DR, which means that I don't expect to see many grid automation subjects in that forum to start. But it is a really, really good first step.

O.

Cooper Power Systems EAS, Stuxnet and control vs. IT

I'm currently at the Cooper Power Systems EAS (Energy Automation Solutions) user conference in Minneapolis. I don't know much about DR, AMI, Smart Grids and such, but had to go there to at least learn the basics and be able to do a better architecture job.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm an "IT guy". Seems that most who work in control don't like IT and I can't blame them. Many control systems are increasingly being linked to ethernet and IP-based networks, along with remote and consolidated interfaces, and this brings many challenges which only IT can address. Enhancing security of these systems is especially important, and many control users don't seem to view security as that important.

I've had an interesting chat with EAS's security guru about the Stuxnet worm. Many technical details have been leaking through Slashdot and elsewhere for a few weeks, thus I won't speculate on its possible origins or intents. But the bottom line is that Stuxnet does exist, and it is a staggering proof that even though its engineering is not within the reach of just anyone, SCADA systems are not immune to security threats.

Like we IT people have been disgusted by the security guys for years now, it's now the turn of control people to have to live with IT. Nice threesome. Looks like I'm stuck in the middle position. FML.

O.