Virtualizing Monitoring and Control Systems: First Operational Experience and Future Applications

Kurzfassung

Virtualization is a technology that becomes widely accepted in a large variety of businesses and applications. It emulates a complete computer platform and allows running it as an application on a host computer. An increasing number of new und concurrently running projects at the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) require more flexible and short-term adjustments of the operational environments. Virtualization is a technology that has been rapidly evolved in the last years as more powerful and advanced hardware has become widely available. It allows emulating a complete computer platform. The potential use ranges from consolidating hardware to running several different operating systems in parallel on one computer to preserving the operability of heritage software. GSOC has been investigating the possibilities of virtualization for some time. Aside from a usual approach of virtualizing central servers out of administration areas, as well as for consolidation and redundancy, the possibilities and advantages of control-room client virtualization were explored. Client virtualization offers the potential to reduce the long term blocking of control rooms during the system buildup phase and to increase the flexibility of the isntalled system. While moving mainstream in other businesses, the space community is cautious to apply this technique to the mission critical monitoring and control systems. This chapter illustrates two virtualization projects that are underway at GSOC and presents the experiences gained. The TanDEM-X mission that launched in June 2010 offered a unique opportunity. The operations scenario of this mission includes dual-satellite operations with TerraSAR-X in very close formation. This requires the ability to monitor both spacecrafts at the same time from the same control room by largely the same team. Mission managers decided to study virtualizing the monitoring of the TerraSAR-X spacecraft on top of the TanDEM-X installations. The ground data system group is under pressure to ensure a strict configuration control over a control room that is permanently in use while allowing modifying and updating parts of it permanently. Virtualization-based installation is being introduced to allow the reaching of this goal.