MONITORING CONTROL APPLICATIONS AT CERN

The Industrial Controls and Engineering (EN-ICE) group [1] of the Engineering Department at CERN has produced, and is responsible for the operation of around 60 applications, which control critical processes in the domains of cryogenics, quench protection systems, power interlocks for the Large Hadron Collider and other sub-systems of the accelerator complex. These applications require 24/7 operation and a quick reaction to problems. For this reason the EN-ICE group is presently developing the Monitoring Operation of cOntrols Networks (MOON) tool to detect, anticipate and inform of possible anomalies in the integrity of the applications. The tool builds on top of Simatic WinCC Open Architecture (WinCC OA) [2] SCADA and makes usage of the Joint COntrols Project (JCOP) [3] and the UNified INdustrial COntrol System (UNICOS) [4] Frameworks developed at CERN. The tool provides centralized monitoring and software management of the different elements integrating the control systems like Windows and Linux servers, PLCs, applications, etc. Although the primary aim of the monitoring tool is to assist the members of the EN-ICE Standby Service, the tool may offer different levels of detail, which also enables experts to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. In this paper, the scope, functionality and architecture of the tool are presented and some initial results on its performance are summarized.