What is Gridcom DIP.net?

Gridcom DIP.net is the optimal software solution for ensuring critical communications in evolving power system automation architecture for advanced substation-to-substation exchanges. Designed upon proven teleprotection principles while hosting advanced automation technologies, the Gridcom DIP.net is a versatile interface between the electrical substation and the telecom network.

What are the benefits of MDS Orbit Platform?

With the MDS Orbit Platform, utilities can now capitalize on uniform security to converge disparate applications within one network and reduce personnel training time.

Is MDS Orbit Platform Secure?

A foundational building block for the MDS Orbit Platform is security, a core competency area for GE, and a critical consideration and requirement for evaluating wireless communications systems for customers across all industry types and geographies.

What are MDS Orbit Platform performance?

GE’s MDS Orbit Platform has been designed with flexibility to allow use of different communication technologies to meet specific bandwidth, range, frequency, and geographic requirements of industrial applications.

Is MDS Orbit easy to use?

Several features have been designed into the MDS Orbit Platform to provide ease of use for customers, reducing the learning curve for new users, and reducing the time required for network deployment, troubleshooting and maintenance.

Communication - Sentinel

Home > Grid Automation > Communications > Hardened Optical Networks > Advanced Network Management

	Overview

	Industrial Wireless

	Hardened Optical Networks

	Teleprotection Signaling Systems

	Power Line Carrier



	Professional Services

	Training

	Repair / Return (RMA)

Sentinel

Monitoring and control of multi-layer operational networks and services

The challenge for Power Utilities in implementing their Operational Communication Network is how to manage an evolving, multi-technology, multi-vendor telecom infrastructure to deliver services with a guaranteed level of quality for multiple groups of users with different service requirements.

GE’s Sentinel delivers a management solution for supervising multi-technology complex networks. Providing a platform that aggregates, correlates and visualizes telecom data from multiple network layers and technologies into user-oriented views, driving operational decisions to restore services, notify users of potential service impacts, and meet KPIs and performance metrics. The result? Greater efficiency and productivity; enhanced monitoring of mission-critical communication services and infrastructure; and reduced downtime and maintenance costs.

Core Capabilities

Integrated management of complex multi-vendor networks
Prompt fault localization
End-to-end availability monitoring and measurement
Rapid deployment irrespective of legacy technologies

Differentiating Features

Functions, scale and cost optimized for grid operational communication networks
Fault, performance and incident management in a single integrated platform
Service user dashboards, impact notifications and service statistics

Optimized Outcomes

Enhanced operator awareness & proactive management
Documented & formal communication service delivery
Structured framework for network information
Comprehensive cyber security solutions

Overview

Sentinel Control Unit

Features Comparison

Technical Data

Sentinel diagram 1

Sentinel is a vendor-agnostic management platform designed to fulfill the requirements of power utilities’ operational communications.

Multi-vendor and multi-technology – Allows flexible construction of the network with best suited building blocks without committing for the future to any specific single vendor.
Easy to deploy, operate, and maintain – Provides a powerful solution for monitoring, supervising and reporting on devices and services at grid scale restraining to features which are relevant for the operational network, hence reducing cost, complexity, and learning effort.
Fully under Utility control – Resides entirely inside the power utility’s security perimeter.
Service-based principles – Associates multiple technologies into the delivery of a single operational service plane (TDM and IP SCADA), facilitating supervision.
Root cause analysis - Service impact detection assists the operator in determining alarm avalanche origin.
Interaction platform for actors and processes - Comprises of incident management and trouble ticketing facilities; mailing facilities for service-related communications; and reporting facilities for maintenance management and user/customer contractual relations.
Standard interface points – SNMP, webservice, customer-defined executable scripts

Sentinel diagram 2

Fault & Incident Management	Performance Management
Technology- and Vendor-agnostic End-to-end and multi-layer vision Generic and simple UI (No specific skills) Enable interaction of O&M actors (including remote clients, field tablets and smartphones) Assist in network fault root cause analysis Rule-based notification (event, time, statistics)	Generate service availability/outage statistics Monitor service level agreements (SLA) Monitor MIB-stored performance data Service-oriented User Dashboards
Configuration Management	Security Management
Store basic Network configuration data Maintain Asset information Manual data population or CSV import files Site Geographic location coordinates Contact Coordinates for incidents, interventions and notifications (user, expert, field staff, …) Unified access to vendor tools and platforms	Role-based access control (RBAC) Password protection for server access Security certificates for unambiguous server identification SSH tunnel between client and server Operator log management Authentication through RADIUS server Secure access for third party systems

Sentinel Control Unit (SCU)

Managing faults from a relatively small cluster of equipment, typically communication devices in a few substations or a single type of equipment, requires a compact and factory-prepared solution. The Sentinel Control Unit (SCU) provides a hardware-integrated ready-to-use management platform for simpler/ smaller networks (~ 60 nodes). This allows to deploy a small supervision system even faster.

SCU diagram

The substation-class hardware allows the platform to be installed in a harsh industrial environment such as an electrical power substation for a cluster’s SNMP management removing the need for an expensive industrial PC. It can be mounted into a DIN-rail cabinet next to communication or protection signaling devices and supplied from a substation 48Vdc battery and charger source. The SCU may also be used as a secondary-level platform in a hierarchical architecture for large networks. In this way, a north-bound SNMP interface at the SCU can be configured so that alarms on the SCU generate a collective event at the higher level platform. The operator can then connect to the SCU (as a client) to get more detailed indication on the alarm cause.

Connection to remote web-based client is protected with all relevant security embedded into the system (encryption, authentication server, etc.)

Sentinel Management Framework Operational Principles

Example application

Sentinel collects alarms and events as well as service performance data from devices and dedicated managers, associates contextual network and quality constraint information to the real-time collected data, and consequently generates operation and maintenance information for the communication service provider and quality of service information for the service users.

Features Comparison Table

Feature	Sentinel Conventional Server 3.6	Sentinel Control Unit (SCU)
Number of network nodes (max)	Up to 2500 nodes (graphical)	60 nodes (expandable to 100 in specific cases)
Number of Clients	Up to 20	2
Server Redundancy	Yes	Not at present
Fault Management	Alarm Monitoring (Graphical & Event List), Filtering, De-duplication, Acknowledge, Rule-based Notification, Operator-based Change of State	Alarm Monitoring (Graphical & Event List), Filtering, De-duplication, Acknowledge, Rule-based Notification, Operator-based Change of State
Incident Management	Trouble ticketing, Task Assignment, Escalation, Intervention Reporting, Asset & Service Tagging, Resolution Statistics	Trouble ticketing, Asset & Service Tagging, Resolution Statistics
Service Management	Service Availability Statistics and SLA Monitoring	Service Availability Statistics and SLA Monitoring
Security Management	Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Encrypted Web-service and Client to Server links, Encrypted device to server links (for SNMPv3 only), Client Authentication (RADIUS), User Log Management	1 client with full rights and encrypted link to SCU Encrypted Web-service and Client to Server links, Encrypted device to server links (for SNMPv3 only), User Log Management
Performance Management	MIB Monitoring on demand	MIB Monitoring on demand
Configuration Management	Asset & Service data available on right- click Shows underlying assets and links for any service Connectable to a Network Inventory Connects to proprietary Element Managers and HMIs	Asset & Service data available on right- click Shows underlying assets and links for any service Connects GE portfolio Managers and HMIs
Embedded Management Files	Incorporates GE portfolio device MIBs . Can load other SNMP device MIBs	Incorporates GE portfolio device MIBs (For other SNMP device MIBs consult GE Ucom)
Sub-networks & Functional Layers	Up to 10 functional layers each can be partitioned independently into multiple sub-networks. Can also regroup multiple nodes into a Super-node.	Up to 3 functional layers. Can regroup nodes on each layer into Super-nodes
Mobile worker terminals	Mobile (Android) Dashboards, Event List, Incident assignment and reporting	Mobile (Android) Dashboards, Event List, Incident assignment and reporting

Technical Data

ARCHITECTURE
N-tiers application based on a service-oriented architecture model OS: RedHat Linux (server) - Windows 10 (Client) Microsoft.Net (Client) - Java (server) - PostgreSQL (database)
AVAILABLITY
Server redundancy through asynchronous data replication
DIMENSIONING DATA
More than 1500 assets and 10 layers according to licence. 60 assets and 3 layers for SCU Can be organized into sub-networks and grouped nodes and services
NUMBER OF CLIENTS
Up to 20 through separate licences
ALARM MANAGEMENT
Alarm reduction (de-duplication) - Multiple alarm indications provided by the same event and element are removed (grouped) to avoid flooding the operator Alarm priority and acknowledge Alarm refinement - Alarm labels may be translated into explicit and vendor independant language Operator-initiated change of state and status consistency check
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT
Task assignment and tagging (assets and services) Incident resolution statistics
SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Service availability statistics and user dashboards MIB element monitoring for all SNMP devices
PROBLEM MANAGEMENT
Root cause analysis - Dispatch of alarms and events across multiple layers of infrastructure and service in order to visualize the root cause anomalies
EVENT REPORTING AND NOTIFICATION
Service level monitoring with temporal analysis Generates triggers on event conditions (asset and service status, service statistics, time of day) used for different actions (audible alert, SMS, email, script execute) Pre-determined report generation (performance, alarms, incidents)
SECURITY AND AUTHENTICATION
Password protected, role-based authorization (RBAC), encrypted web services Client authorization using RADIUS server SSH communication tunnel between client and server, security certificates for unambiguous server identification