Backup and restore

Recovering and reconstituting an automation control system to a known state after a disruption or failure is an important topic in the defense in depth concept and recommended in the IEC 62443.

In a backup and restore strategy, all the data which are necessary for recover and their location in the system are identified. The frequency of creating backups, the kind of backup (complete, differential or incremental) and the storage location of the backups are described in this strategy.

Backup will be categorized as following:

• System backup: The IEM is saved completely as full system using virtual machine snapshots.

• Data/Configuration backup: Apps and configurations are saved in the IED backup.

Restoring is more critical than the creation of backups. This process must be tested and reproduced to guarantee fast availability of the plant systems in case of emergency and minimizes downtimes.

Backup IEM

Performing a backup of the IEM should be done by using the mechanism of the underlying platform.

Backup IED

The IE State Service should be used to remember the configuration of the device as well as the installed applications and their data on the IEM. This data can be used to restore an onboarded device to the stored state.

To minimize the impact during a disaster scenario, the Industrial Edge State Service provides the possibility to implement Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies based on your DR plan respectively requirements. This may include minimizing the down time as well as loss of data. With the IE State Service, you can store the IED state of an Edge Device on the IEM. In case of any occurring errors respectively failures in the Edge Device, you can choose and restore a desired stored IED state on the Edge Device. Only 1 IED state per Edge Device can be stored in the IEM.

Deleting of IEDs

If IEDs are deleted from the IEM, the respective backup is not deleted. It can be restored to any other IED (which will be overwritten).

Protection against power loss

Customers are responsible for integrating means to protect all operating Industrial Edge Devices and the host on which the Industrial Edge Management system is running against power loss. Siemens recommends integrating an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to back up data and to shut down the Industrial Edge Management VM correctly. In case of an unprotected power loss, the Industrial Edge Devices, the IEM and apps running on these components might not work anymore and need to be restored or set up again.

Requirements for Operation

Requirement	Remark
Create backup plan and implement regular backups	-
Create disaster recovery plan and define responsibilities	-
Implement regular recovery tests	-