Fluxys chooses Matrox KVM Extio extenders 3 for your monitoring systems

These high-performance IP systems allow the European natural gas operator to group IT equipment, that emit heat and noise, in a secure data center, while allowing to improve productivity.

In Belgium, Fluxys is responsible for the maintenance of high pressure pipelines, as well as gas storage in Loenhout and the liquefied natural gas terminal (LNG) and Zeebrugge. Daily, employees supervise 4.000 kilometers of high pressure gas pipelines. To provide the best work environment, decided to completely renew the front-end of its system Dispatching.

The Fluxys control room had a workspace with certain deficiencies. Most of the computer systems were placed next to each dispatcher's desk., producing a lot of heat and noise, in addition to giving a feeling of overwhelm.

Fluxys wanted to renovate the control room and transfer all IT systems to a data center. It is at this time that they took the opportunity to incorporate KVM over IP extenders from Matrox. “With the experiences we had had with Extio KVM extenders 2, our decision to bet on the Extio 3 it was easy. These offer the performance, the feature set and reliability we were looking for, while providing support for the latest Windows operating system”, comments Tim Deleeuw, Fluxys Project Manager.

The computers of the dispatcher have been moved one floor below where the control room is located, at distances of between 50 y 100 metros, to a secure and controlled data center, away from heat and noise. Each computer is connected to an Extio transmitter 3 N3408 and all signals are extended via a single fiber optic cable to the dispatcher's desk, where the receiving device, quiet and compact, Extinction 3 N3408 powers peripherals and four DisplayPort displays.

With the new configuration, Fluxys is well positioned to transition from its peer-to-peer to a network structure, since Extio 3 supports both types of configurations.

Backup settings

At the company headquarters in Brussels, each of the six desks of the dispatcher is equipped with two Extio receiver units 3 N3408 supporting eight screens displaying data from three types of systems.

To make nominations for customers who purchase natural gas or liquefied natural gas from Fluxys or store them, Dispatchers use a gas flow application called GSmart. The second system is a supervisory control and data acquisition application (Scada) which portrays the real-time gas flow environment of high-pressure pipelines. Y, the third is Astrid, a system that manages the voice and data communication network for all emergency and security services in Belgium.

Extinction 3 extends all signals and provides a remote desktop to dispatcher for these time critical applications.

Fluxys has also established a backup center, where the dispatcher clients and Extio units 3 are deployed in an exact replica of the main configuration. If something happens to the primary systems, This disaster recovery configuration allows you to switch to the backup center and resume operations.