We explore the challenges and opportunities of shifting industrial control software from dedicated hardware to bare-met al servers or cloud computing platforms using off the shelf technologies. In particular, we demonstrate that executing time-critical applications on cloud platforms is viable based on a series of dedicated latency tests targeting relevant real-time configurations.
Virtualization is entering the world of real-time embedded systems. Industrial automation systems, in particular, can benefit from what virtualization has to offer: flexible consolidation of applications on different hardware types and scales, extending the life-time of legacy code or decoupling software and hardware lifecycles. However, such systems require a light-weight virtualization technology in order to be able to maintain real-time behavior while dealing with real-time data. This paper sets out to investigate the applicability of container-based OS-level virtualization technology to industrial automation systems. To this end, we provide insights into the capabilities of containers to achieve flexible consolidation and easy migration of industrial automation applications as well as into the container technology readiness with respect to the fundamental requirement of industrial automation systems, namely performing timely control actions based on real-time data. Moreover, we provide an empirical study of the performance overhead introduced by containers based on micro-benchmarks that capture the characteristics of targeted industrial automation applications.