Cloud Platform Construction for Giant Power Enterprise

1.Background

An enormous electric power company, which has constructed the largest power transmission and distribution network in the world, has very high requirements for the safety, stability and controllability of its operational systems, and is very cautious in the application of new technologies. The Dispatching and Control Center has planned and constructed the data center's cloud platform step by step with the goal of meeting the development requirements of its UHV power grid as well as the needs of different professions and businesses regarding the grid's output and management. The standardized modeling of data, unified dictionary management, unified device coding, and synchronization of model data from client to cloud are implemented on top of the cloud platform in accordance with the technical specifications of model data construction. A series of data applications, such as network models, data services, multi-dimensional analysis, intelligent applications, and global searches, have been initialized in order to provide auxiliary decision-making support to dispatching agencies at all levels, and further enhance the collaboration between power grid regulation and control and the level of intelligent data applications.

The cloud platform utilizes the most up-to-date information and communication technologies, adapts to integrated operation of the power grid, and gradually virtualizes resources, standardizes data, launches service-oriented applications, and visualizes operation and maintenance.

2.Solution

After the in-depth inspection of major domestic and foreign cloud computing service providers, the Dispatching and Control Center eventually joined forces exclusively with H3C to build a regulation and control cloud platform. The primary cloud adopts a two-site cloud platform mode, with both sites providing services to the outside in order to achieve dual-active services. Data is read and written separately for data services by single-writing and two-reading.

The project includes cloud platform virtualization, distributed storage, a big data platform, global load balancing, server load balancing, platform data synchronization, a panoramic monitoring large screen display, one-button disaster tolerance switch monitoring, and many other solutions involving customization of a large number of customer needs.

The cloud platform of the company uses H3Cloud OS, the mainstream product based on OpenStack standard architecture in order to perform unified management and dispatch of IT resources (physical resources, virtual resources, databases, big data, middleware, applications, etc.). At the same time, a unified cloud service portal was customized for the company, and a unified cloud service entrance was provided for the headquarters, branches and provincial companies.

3.Customer Value

H3C has designed and implemented a solution for the company, which has launched resource pooling and realized flexible expansion of the infrastructure.

- By adopting an advanced cloud computing architecture, the cloud IT infrastructure provides flexible scalability and high reliability and redundancy compared with traditional scheduling stations that feature both exclusive resources and tight coupling of their software and hardware. It also makes pooling of computing, storage, network and security resources possible, in addition to big data resources and other basic operating resources, thus greatly improving their utilization rate.

Cross-District Dual-Active and Business Continuity

- The network supports the dual-active application of the cross-district cloud and data read-write separation using leading distributed storage and data synchronization technologies, with disaster recovery supplemented with backup, a solution which is very innovative and advanced within the industry.

Cloud-Based Service

- A unified cloud service portal was provided to connect external services through the open interface,creating a service-oriented application.

Unified Resource Management

- The centralized resource management platform achieved unified management of cloud infrastructure resources, database clusters, application status and performance and meets the requirements of centralized operation and maintenance.

- The successful launch of the cloud platform represented a new mode of dispatching operation management, providing strong support for the future development of intelligent dispatching.