Systems and methods for hierarchical organization of software defined process control systems for industrial process plants

An industrial process control system comprising:

• a plurality of process control field devices operating to control a physical process in an industrial process plant;
• a communication infrastructure communicatively coupling the plurality of process control field devices to a software-defined control system that receives data from the plurality of process control field devices and transmits instructions to the plurality of process control field devices;
• a data cluster comprising a plurality of computing nodes, the data cluster executing the software-defined control system, each computing node comprising:
• a processor executing an instance of an operating system;
• a memory;
• and
• a communication resource coupled to one or more other computing nodes in the data cluster;
• a first computational container instantiated on a first computing node, the first computational container being a first isolated execution environment and executing within the instance of the operating system of the first computing node;
• and
• a second computational container instantiated within the first computational container on the first computing node, the second computational container being a second isolated execution environment executing one or more first services on the first computing node, within the instance of the operating system of the first computing node,
• wherein the first and second computational containers correspond, respectively, to first and second levels of a hierarchical structure of an industrial process control system, the industrial process control system being configured to perform physical processes to produce a product by transforming constituent materials,
• and wherein the hierarchical structure comprises logical groupings of resources and components configured to manage and execute tasks within the industrial process control system.

A method comprising:

• instantiating in a first computing node of a data cluster a first computational container, the first computational container being a first isolated execution environment within an operating system of the first computing node;
• instantiating, within the first computational container in the first computing node of the data cluster, a second computational container, the second computational container being a second isolated execution environment within the operating system of the first computing node;
• and
• executing in the second computational container one or more first services,
• wherein the first and second computational containers correspond, respectively, to first and second levels of a hierarchical structure of an industrial process control system, the industrial process control system being configured to perform physical processes to produce a product by transforming constituent materials,
• and wherein the hierarchical structure comprises logical groupings of resources and components configured to manage and execute tasks within the industrial process control system.