Usage of VEEAM for Plant SCADA backup

[JSANTT]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone had experience with the usage of VEEAM on AVEVA Plant SCADA environments.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

JSA

[olivier_vallee]

Hi @JSANTT,

I've heard of other customers using Nutanix on Plant SCADA environments.

The important thing to be aware of is what licensing method you are using. If you are using FLM (from Plant SCADA 2020 R2 / 8.30 and earlier) or AEL (from Plant SCADA 2023 / 8.40 and later) they are both sensitive to snapshots being taken. The most robust solution in those cases is to use Sentinel hardware dongle with AnywhereUSB product. Also some care must be made to ensure runtime is not impacted (mostly CPU and disk access) while backups are being made. Hope others in the community can share their experience with VEEAM with you. Also feel free to post this question over at AVEVA Hero's HQ (https://softwareforums.aveva.com/heroes-hq)

Kind regards

Oliver

[JSANTT]

Hi Oliver,

Many thanks for your answer and sorry for the late reply.  I did not get an email indicating your answered my post.

I will post my question to the Hero's HQ as you are suggesting.

One small question about the FLM and AEL options you are mentioning.  Could you please explain the difference between these options ?  I will check with our client which solution they are using.

Many thanks,

JSANTT

[olivier_vallee]

Hi @JSANTT,

I hope this reply gets through to you fine this time.

With Floating License Manager (FLM) this was a licensing brick owned by Schneider Electric. It was included with Citect SCADA 7.30 until Plant SCADA 2020 R2 (v8.30). It was a way to license the software using an activation code, which was validated by an License Activation Server. Basically a softkey.

With AVEVA Enterprise Licensing (AEL) this is basically a license brick owned by AVEVA. It was included in Plant SCADA 2020 R2 (8.30) but was only used to license the AIG Server (new Web Client). With Plant SCADA 2023 (v8.40) this was the first version which AEL could be used to license the SCADA runtime (Server, Client, HMI or Driver licenses). Again this is just a softkey, which is more a true Server/Client architecture with advanced features like reservation (for device only) and checkout.

With either FLM or AEL, they both have limitations with backup and restore of image, since it tracks the signature of the machine, which is often changed when doing disaster recovery. Hence the only robust solution I know of for these use cases is to use the Sentinel Key with USBAnywhere. 

Kind regards

Olivier