Success Story
Focus on Secure Remote Maintenance and Network Integration
To implement the remote and integration capability, two components from Helmholz were chosen: the REX 100 industrial router and the WALL IE industrial NAT gateway.
To implement the remote and integration capability, the choice fell on two components from Helmholz: the REX 100 industrial router and the WALL IE industrial NAT gateway. There were four arguments in favor of the Helmholz solutions, which Jakob Eisenach summarizes as follows: "The devices are easy to configure, compact in design and very robust. In addition, the price was also right for us."
Anyone who operates a public swimming pool or whirlpool needs this new development from Grünbeck Wasseraufbereitung GmbH: the spaliQ:UF200 ultrafiltration system takes over the complete pool water treatment there and thus ensures excellent water quality.
"The spaliQ:UF200 is an egg-laying lizard," is how product manager Florian Seiler sums it up. With its type of filtration, the system not only ensures germ-free water, it also manages all upstream and downstream process steps in pool water treatment, from water extraction and temperature control to final disinfection.
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These Helmholz products are used by Grünbeck
Remote and integration capability as central requirements
The complex plant is controlled via a PLC and an HMI panel. Since control concepts generally have to meet additional requirements in view of digitalization, the Grünbeck experts took the current new development as an opportunity to implement corresponding future-proof solutions. Specifically, this involved the topics of remote access and integration. Only regular maintenance guarantees the high quality standards. New ways of remote maintenance and thus the remote capability of the control system were therefore in demand.
Moreover, swimming pool technology is not a stand-alone solution, but part of a more comprehensive building technology environment. Until now, several IP addresses were always necessary for the required integration. Often, these had to be changed at great expense during subsequent commissioning. This resulted in the second issue, which Jakob Eisenach, responsible for automation in the system technology area at Grünbeck, describes as follows: "Our goal was: The customer can integrate our control system into his network easily and securely without us having to change or adapt our control system each time. So we wanted a single clean interface between our control and the customer's network."
© Grünbeck Wasseraufbereitung GmbH
© Tom Bendix
REX 100 industrial router
The REX industrial routers from Helmholz enable simple, flexible and secure remote maintenance of Ethernet components and transparent data communication. All common engineering tools are supported via an interface. As a result, the maintenance PC is virtually located in the customer's plant. Data packets can be forwarded directly to the automation network.
The security requirements are correspondingly high. Data transmission is therefore generally encrypted via a secure OpenVPN tunnel. This technology ensures very high security for the communication path between the OpenVPN gateway. The Helmholz portal serves as the switching center for the OpenVPN communication between the programmer and the customer system: myREX24.net. Both sides can establish the OpenVPN tunnel with it as outgoing connection. The firewalls or even restrictions of services are thus no longer an issue, because these only restrict the data traffic into the network, but not that out of the network.
Industrial NAT Gateway WALL IE
The highest cybersecurity standards must also be ensured when integrating the plant control system into a higher-level network. In this context, the plant network is regarded as a LAN (Local Area Network), the higher-level network as a WAN (Wide Area Network). To protect both effectively against external attacks, the LAN must be securely integrated into the higher-level WAN or separated from it.
This function is performed by the Industrial NAT Gateway WALL IE. Specifically, the component protects the networks by regulating exactly which subscriber is allowed to exchange data with which device. Jakob Eisenach is particularly enthusiastic about one function:
"The ability to route without mixing IP addresses is a truly unique selling point!"
The WALL IE works on the WAN side with a virtual IP address. Access rights are thus reliably restricted to authorized persons. The automation network is protected accordingly. The IP addresses behind the WALL IE, on the other hand, remain hidden and are not visible from the outside. If the company network is now
is threatened by a hacker attack, the automation network behind the WALL IE remains unaffected.
„The possibility of routing without mixing the IP address is a real unique selling point!“
Jakob Eisenach, Project Manager, Grünbeck Wasseraufbereitung GmbH
Proven in practical use
Both Helmholz components, REX 100 and WALL IE, have now been successfully in use at Grünbeck for over a year and are being installed as standard in the spaliQ:UF200 for the first time. Last but not least, the users of the new system benefit from this, as automation expert Jakob Eisenach shows with an example: "The customer now only has to manage a single IP address in his network for the entire system, namely that of the WALL IE, and accesses the touch panel visualization directly via it."
Maintenance work, e.g. in the event of error messages, can also now be carried out remotely thanks to the REX 100. User management ensures that only authorized Grünbeck technicians are allowed to access the relevant systems via the myREX24.net portal. If an on-site visit does become necessary, this can be optimally planned on the basis of the diagnostic data already available. Due to these advantages, Grünbeck has completely converted its service concept to REX with the new ultrafiltration plant. Further systems in the field of system technology will follow successively.
