Hybrid Software Deployment Strategy for Complex Industrial Systems

Abstract

Complex industrial systems run the different pieces of software in several interconnected physical layers. The software update in such an environment must be performed in the shortest possible period with the lowest possible resource usage. Namely, it is critical to minimize the data traffic, decrease software downtime, and reduce the impact of the transitional stage during the update process. To meet these requirements and to unify the update process, the common software node structure along with a hybrid software deployment strategy is proposed. The hybrid strategy is defined as a combination of the existing and well-tested techniques—blue/green, canary, and feature flags. The main aim was to utilize their positive sides and to obtain a better overall effect. The approach was tested in the simulation environment, based on the realistic factory layout, and running the software related to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) level. For successful updates, the proposed hybrid deployment method reduced downtime on server nodes to less than 5% and on client nodes to a half compared with the standard approach. The volume of data traffic reduction in a configuration with sentinel nodes is reduced by one-third. The presented results look promising, especially in cases of erroneous updates when a roll back is needed, where the downtime on the server nodes is reduced to the level of 3%. Achieved results are used to define the set of recommendations that could be extended for the other software layers, followed by a discussion about further potential problems and strategy variations.