The logical design consists of multiple elements that enable deployment and management infrastructure used to run vPAC applications and provide real-time isolated performance to ensure vPAC has the resources it requires.

vSphere is enabled and configured on a vPAC edge compute cluster, which can consist of a single node or multiple nodes, depending on the level of availability required.

Availability Levels and Virtualization Functionality

There are several methods to deploy vPAC-based workloads. The following table indicates the features and functionality based on the number of hosts made available at a specific location (such as a substation).

Table 1. Host Configurations and Resulting Infrastructure Availability Levels

Number of Hosts

Solution Enabled Functionality

VMware Enabled Features

Features not Available

One

  • Virtualization of multiple workloads.

  • Real-time performance.

  • PTP time synchronization.

  • Virtual networking.

  • VMFS datastore.

  • vPAC application failover.

  • VMware high availability.

  • VMware vSAN shared datastore.

    • Encryption.

    • High availability.

    • Datastore performance.

Two (without vSAN or shared storage)

  • Virtualization of multiple workloads.

  • Real-time performance.

  • Workload failover (supported by active-active workloads).

  • PTP time synchronization.

  • Virtual networking.

  • VMFS datastore.

  • VMware high availability.

  • VMware vSAN shared datastore.

    • Encryption.

    • High availability.

    • Datastore performance.

Two (with vSAN witness at control center or data center)

  • Virtualization of multiple workloads.

  • Real-time performance.

  • Workload failover (supported by vPAC software and vSphere HA).

  • PTP time synchronization.

  • Virtual networking.

  • VMware high availability.

  • VMware vSAN shared datastore.

    • Encryption.

    • High availability.

    • Datastore performance.

Requires Witness and continuous network connectivity to control center or data center.

Three

  • Virtualization of multiple workloads.

  • Real-time performance.

  • Workload failover (supported by vPAC software and vSphere HA).

  • PTP time synchronization.

  • Virtual networking.

  • VMware high availability.

  • VMware vSAN shared datastore.

    • Encryption.

    • High availability.

    • Datastore performance.

None.

Logical Design Diagram

The following diagram provides an overview of the infrastructure design enabled by this guide. Elements of this design might change based on the details of each deployment and associated networking available within a specific substation.

Figure 1. VVS Reference Architecture


Note:

  • vPR Application Characteristics:

    • Examples: ABB SSC600 SW and Kalkitech VPR.

    • Requires low latency and long-term consistency.

    • Not compute intensive, bust must be core-pinned to meet the low latency and long-term consistency.

    • Can be built as a vendor package to run multiple compute-intensive workloads to gain efficiency.

  • vAC Application Characteristics:

    • Examples: Remote Telemetry Unit and Cyber security.

    • Critical but no requirements for real-time latencies and long-term consistency. Therefore, vAC applications can use general compute resources.

    • Can be managed with HA and DRS in active or passive mode.

  • Other Notes from VVS Reference Architecture:

    • PTP distribution through wide area network provides greater redundancy and resiliency.

    • PTP is suggested within the Inter-station signals.

    • Inter-station signals are made up of protection, automation, and control signals (for example, line current differential protocols or R-GOOSE or R-SV).