Dynamic Resource Management for Virtualization in Industrial Automation

Virtualization is an increasingly used trend in industrial automation to optimize the hardware utilization and ease the scalability of automation systems. In the classic industrial automation, applications are written for a certain operating system and have to be installed on a specific hardware. This increases the number of hardwares. A virtualization by means of a hypervisor provides a possibility to run different applications and their operating systems on the same hardware but in different and independent software-containers. Industry 4.0, a German automation initiative that includes cyber physical systems, requires a certain degree of flexibility that is referred to as changeability. Implementing Industry 4.0 changeable scenarios require flexible automation solutions. A dynamic strategy which enables real time resource-management between these applications is an important factor to optimize the utilization of hardware resources and to make a changeable production possible. The applied method in this contribution allows to run different applications with diverse operating systems on the same hardware while providing them with their necessary resources (computing time, network,...) and managing them according to domain specific requirements. To meet the domain specific requirements, a concept of an infrastructure-application is introduced in this article.