High Availability and Redundancy for Building Management Systems (BMS)

What is a building management system (BMS)?

A building management system (BMS) brings the automatic centralized control of building’s HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), electrical, lighting…

A building management system increases safety for building residents, reduces energy consumption and reduces operating and maintenance costs.

Why a BMS software is critical?

A BMS software controls fire system, electrical distribution panels, water consumption, air conditioning systems, lighting control.

Life safety in the building is directly associated to the correct execution of the BMS software.

And that’s why, the system must be always available for building operators who must react immediately to the slightest incident.

Key players list in BMS

The key players in BMS are:

• Honeywell International Inc. (US)

• Johnson Controls (Ireland)

• Schneider Electric (France)

• Siemens (Germany)

• United Technologies (US)

• ABB (Sweden)

• Azbil Corporation (Japan)

• Delta Controls (India)

• LARSEN & TOUBRO LIMITED (India)

• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan)

• Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany)

• Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (Singapore)

• DEXMA SENSORS, S.L. (Spain)

• Eagle Technology (India)

• Legrand (France)

• Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. (US)

• Technovator International Limited (Singapore)

• Airedale Air Conditioning (UK)

• BuildingIQ (US)

• ACUITY BRANDS LIGHTING, INC. (US)

• GridPoint (US)

SafeKit brings two solutions for redundancy and high availability of a BMS software

Redundancy and high availability at the application level

In this type of solution, only application data are replicated. And only the application is restared in case of failure.

This solution requires a technical understanding of the application. You need to define which services to restart, specify the application folders to replicate, and configure a virtual IP address for failover. But this solution is platform agnostic and works with applications inside physical machines, virtual machines, in the Cloud. Any hypervisor is supported (VMware, Hyper-V…).

Examples

• Video management: Milestone (Management, SQL, Log, Event)/SafeKit
• Video management: Genetec (SQL)/SafeKit
• Access control: Nedap (AEOS, SQL)/SafeKit
• New application (define services to restart, application folders to replicate, a virtual IP address for failover): Windows, Linux

Redundancy and high availability at the virtual machine level

In this type of solution, the BMS software is put inside a virtual machine. The full Virtual Machine (VM) is replicated and restarted (Application + OS).

The advantage of this solution is that it does not require a technical understanding of the application; you only need to define the location of the VM files where the application is installed. This solution is generic for any BMS software. However, it works only with Windows/Hyper-V and Linux/KVM, but not with VMware. This is an active/active solution with several virtual machines replicated and restarted between two nodes.

Examples

• Building management: Siemens Desigo CC/SafeKit
• Video management and access control: Siemens Siveillance suite/SafeKit
• New application (define the location of the VM files folder where the application is installed): Windows/Hyper-V, Linux/KVM

More comparison between VM HA vs Application HA

SafeKit, a recognized solution on the security market

Milestone has chosen SafeKit

SafeKit is deployed in 30+ countries with the video management software of Milestone.

SafeKit is validated by Milestone for redundancy and high availability of the management server.

SafeKit is the best solution because it is purely software, completely hardware-agnostic.

Solution preferred by Siemens

SafeKit is available in the Siemens marketplace with its Siveillance suite (video and access control) and with its SCADA software: Desigo CC (building management), SIMATIC WinCC, SIMATIC PCS 7.

SafeKit is deployed by Siemens in Australia, France, the Netherlands, Qatar, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, the US.

SafeKit recommended by Nedap

Nedap, a key player in physical access control, recommends SafeKit for redundancy and high availability of its AEOS application.

The Nedap/SafeKit solution is available with a free trial and a quick installation guide.

TIL Technologies has chosen SafeKit

SafeKit is deployed in 100+ customer sites by TIL Technologies for access control and building management.

SafeKit is the high availability option of MICROSESAME.

Innovation award in Video Management Software

Readers of Benchmark Magazine (specialized in physical security systems for resellers & SI) have voted for SafeKit as an innovation in Video Management Software.

This award shows the importance of redundancy in security offerings.

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