by Gary Mintchell | Mar 27, 2026 | Enterprise IT, Security
The accumulation, retention, and analysis of data continues to provide an important foundation for digital transformation, as well as, providing a threat vector for malicious hackers. News from companies combatting the problem forms a core to any coverage these days. This news contains details about launch of another IT solution.
DH2i, a leading provider of always-secure and always-on IT solutions, announced the general availability (GA) launch of DxEnterprise v26.0 and DxOperator v2, featuring high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and operational resilience capabilities enhancements for SQL Server deployments across Windows, Linux, and Kubernetes environments. Together, the releases introduce meaningful advances in availability group (AG) protection, security controls, observability, and automation for both traditional and containerized SQL Server deployments.
In today’s enterprises, a perfect storm has emerged where applications have become direct revenue channels, infrastructure complexity has increased while IT staffing has not, modernization initiatives are no longer optional, security and compliance requirements are tightening, and software update velocity has accelerated. Together, these forces expose the limits of traditional HA approaches. What once worked for small, static clusters no longer scales when SQL Server deployments span hybrid, multi-platform, and containerized environments that demand continuous availability, stronger safeguards, and higher levels of automation. DxEnterprise v26.0 and DxOperator v2 address these challenges head-on.
DxEnterprise v26.0 focuses on improving cluster resilience, visibility, and administrative confidence through enhanced monitoring, stronger safeguards against split-brain scenarios, expanded credential support, and platform modernization. DxOperator v2 extends those capabilities into Kubernetes environments, giving users greater control over scale, updates, and network configuration for SQL Server AGs running in containers.
What’s New in DxEnterprise v26.0
- Deeper SQL Server and Availability Group Intelligence
- Database-level health monitoring is now enabled by default, allowing faster detection of issues affecting individual databases within an AG
- Split-brain scenarios are prevented via automatic per-availability-group quorum enforcement by demoting or shutting down replicas when quorum requirements are not met
- Improved replica connectivity alerts provide real-time notification when replicas disconnect or when SQL Server replica configurations diverge from expected cluster state
- Improved Security and Credential Resilience
- Support for secondary SQL Server backup credentials enables automatic fallback if primary authentication fails, reducing downtime caused by credential changes or expirations
- Administrative sessions are automatically disconnected when the cluster passkey changes, ensuring only authorized users with current credentials retain access
- The DxAdmin user interface now includes clearer prompts, stronger validation, and improved feedback for passkey configuration
- Greater Stability and Observability
- Core monitoring services, including DxLMonitor, DxCMonitor, DxStorMonitor, and DxHealthMonitor, have received reliability and stability improvements to reduce unexpected restarts and improve overall cluster resilience
- Basic anonymous telemetry is now available to help improve product quality and diagnostics, with opt-out configuration for customers who prefer not to participate
- Platform and Usability Enhancements
- DxEnterprise’s Linux version now runs on the .NET 8.0 runtime, delivering improved performance, security, and long-term support alignment
- Virtual hosts can now be renamed using a new rename-vhost command, simplifying cluster management and reorganization
- Additional safeguards prevent accidental overwriting of existing data stores during SQL Server high availability virtualization
- Enhancements to DxCLI and DxPS improve command-line usability, including human-readable XML output and new PowerShell cmdlets
- The DxCollect utility now includes expanded command-line options for more targeted diagnostics and log collection.
What’s New in DxOperator v2
- Flexible Scaling Up and Down
- Availability group clusters can now be expanded or reduced dynamically
- Unlike the previous version, DxOperator v2 can safely de-configure and remove replicas from a running cluster, enabling true scale-down operations
- Automated Rolling Updates
- Administrators can automate rolling updates of SQL Server or DxEnterprise container images, allowing pods to be updated one at a time without manual intervention
- Updates can also be performed manually when desired, giving operators full control over rollout strategy
- DxOperator does not automatically check for new container versions, ensuring that administrators remain in control of when and how updates are applied
- Advanced Network and Service Configuration
- Flexible service templates allow load balancers and other network services to be fully specified and automatically deployed per availability group replica
- This enables more consistent connectivity across different Kubernetes environments and cloud providers
- Redesigned Custom Resource and StatefulSet Adoption
- The custom resource definition has been redesigned for greater flexibility and now leverages Kubernetes StatefulSets
- By delegating pod creation, storage allocation, and rolling upgrades to Kubernetes, DxOperator v2 simplifies internal logic while benefiting from native Kubernetes reliability and lifecycle management
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 26, 2026 | Generative AI, Process Control, Software
TwinThread is one of those smallish software companies within an interesting niche that I can’t believe has yet to find a buyer. I quoted noted software developer and LinkedIn commentator Rick Bullota in 2020 extolling the value of the AVEVA/TwinThread link with the AVEVA purchase of OSIsoft. Just last year, I wrote about a stronger partnership between the two.
I see the company has pivoted a bit to now proclaiming itself as “the world’s first to have a complete Industrial AI platform.” I’ll leave that proclamation to your judgement. But this product looks worthwhile to check out.
Last week’s news involved TwinThread releasing an AI-powered manufacturing analytics solution targeting batch processes called Perfect Batch. This product empowers manufacturers to standardize and consistently replicate their best performing or “golden batches”.
Perfect Batch applies industrial AI to dynamically identify ideal batch profiles from historical data and actively recommend actions for increasing efficiency. This enables organizations to rapidly shift from reactive firefighting to proactive optimization in a matter of weeks – not months or years.
Perfect Batch At-a-Glance:
- Rapid Speed to Value: Perfect Batch connects to existing batch execution systems and automatically interrogates past data to build digital twins and apply models in hours.
- Dynamic Perfect Profile Learning: Instead of setting limits manually, Perfect Batch dynamically learns ideal control limits and process centerlines, based on actual process capability and historical performance.
- Unlocked Hidden Capacity: Granular cycle time analysis identifies bottlenecks and lost production time, facilitating capacity improvements from existing assets without new capital investment.
- Optimization by Exception: Automated alerting and issue diagnosis empowers operations teams to focus on solving problems, without getting bogged down with endless troubleshooting and investigations.
- Optional Closed-Loop Action: Thread Builder, a real-time workflow engine that works with Perfect Batch, automates anomaly responses, performs automatic diagnoses, and can trigger specific corrective actions automatically.
- Automated Compliance: Tailored for regulated industries, Perfect Batch provides automated material tracking, quality and yield conformance, and audit-ready histories.
Beyond the plant floor, Perfect Batch helps drive strategic and collaborative alignment across organizations’ entire manufacturing portfolios by providing a global view of asset utilization and batch making performance. As a result, the platform serves as a single source of truth for cross-functional teams. This offers a common lens that operations teams, engineering teams, and supply chain leaders can all use to identify, prioritize, and proactively execute improvement initiatives that optimize the deployment of capital across the supply network.
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 25, 2026 | Operator Interface, Process Control
Honeywell announced a pilot project last November for its AI-powered Operations Assistant. The commercial launch of the product has just been announced.
Everyone announces AI of one sort or another added to their systems. I suspect that operators will find both much assistance and occasional annoyance. I’d like to hear more about the real world after using AI for a while.
Honeywell announced March 19, 2026 the commercial launch of Experion Operations Assistant, an AI-powered solution designed to transform how industrial operators monitor plant performance, make critical decisions and respond to alarm incidents before they happen.
Built on Honeywell’s flagship distributed control system, Experion PKS, Experion Operations Assistant merges historical data with real-time operational insights to allow operators to forecast and respond to potential critical scenarios associated with unsafe operations and production losses. The solution aims to bridge the gap between autonomous technologies and control room operators.
The commercial launch follows the recent pilot program during which Chevron and TotalEnergies were among the partners who leveraged Honeywell’s Experion Operations Assistant in their operations to help minimize unplanned downtime. In its pilot phase, the AI-powered assistant made predictions an average of 5-10 minutes before alarm incidents would have happened, enabling operators to quickly implement corrective actions and avoid potential events.
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 23, 2026 | Process Control
I have noted ABB’s update to its automation systems—Automation Extended and the first product incorporating it, the 800xA. ABB’s challenge for the past 25 years has been modernizing the installed base it acquired. This new platform incorporates many of the latest technologies and standards.
The news in brief:
- Latest version of Symphony Plus distributed control system (DCS) release is built to help industries accelerate modernization without disruption
- Enables secure, standardized and interoperable connectivity with system-wide OPC UA, enhanced field device integration, and ethernet backbone
- Includes Automation Extended functionality, separating control and digital environments to empower innovation while maintaining core system reliability
This is the new product:
ABB has introduced SPR2025, the latest Symphony Plus distributed control system (DCS) package release to enable modernization and efficient performance for the process and power industries. This release supports upgrades for both existing installations and new deployments.
SPR2025 helps modernize industrial operations quickly and efficiently, whether upgrading existing Harmony Rack-based systems without disruption, or deploying the latest automation innovations for new projects. Online upgrades, enhanced OS and virtualization support, powerful conversion tools, and a clear evolution path allow customers in industries such as power, water, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals and pulp & paper to implement improvements at their own pace, ensuring continual reliability and minimal risk.
ABB had explained in its earlier release that this can be described as “open” due to use of OPC UA.
Symphony Plus delivers stronger communications performance and strengthens data integration across distributed operations. With system-wide OPC UA, ethernet backbone, and support for smart field devices using the latest FDI technology, operators benefit from secure, standardized, and interoperable connectivity, enabling connection of different devices and platforms.
The benefit to users.
The inclusion of Automation Extended functionality utilizing separation of concerns architecture enables Symphony Plus customers to adopt advanced automation and digital technologies without disruption. By separating control and digital environments, customers can deploy system performance monitoring, advanced analytics, and AI-based decision support applications, while maintaining the reliability and security of core control processes.
Major updates include:
- Version synchronization and online upgrades for a more streamlined and predictable system-wide upgrade experience, reducing engineering effort and minimizing operational disruption.
- Support for latest Microsoft operating systems and multiple virtualization platforms enables multi‑OS deployment, simplifying lifecycle management across modern IT/OT environments and enhancing long-term sustainability.
- Enhanced OPC UA connectivity provides secure, standards‑based interoperability, ensuring seamless data exchange and readiness for evolving digital architectures.
- Advanced device management with Field Information Manager (FIM) accelerates device onboarding, improves diagnostics, and streamlines maintenance of instruments.
- Expanded system-wide connectivity enables the use of additional Virtual Plant Network Interfaces to optimize communications and reduce system footprint.
- Seamless evolution from Harmony Rack to SDe Series, supported by powerful automated conversion tools allow customers to preserve prior intellectual investment.
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 18, 2026 | Generative AI, Robots
Now that we’re learning more about Large Language Model AI, users have discovered that what the model is trained on is one important key. That makes this robot AI trainer intriguing.
Universal Robots and Scale AI Launch Imitation Learning System to Accelerate AI Model Training, Bridging the ’Lab-to-Factory’ Gap
Universal Robots (UR) unveiled March 16 the UR AI Trainer at GTC 2026 in Silicon Valley. Developed in collaboration with Scale AI, the AI Trainer marks a tectonic shift as robots move from pre-programmed applications to fully AI-driven tasks. These systems are powered by robust data generated in AI training cells where robots imitate humans.
“Our customers, ranging from large enterprises to AI research labs, are no longer just asking for AI features,” said Anders Beck, VP of AI Robotics Products at Universal Robots. “They need a way to collect high-fidelity, synchronized robot and vision data to train AI models on the same robots they intend to deploy. Our AI Trainer is the industry’s first direct lab-to-factory solution for AI model training.”
Alongside the new AI Trainer, Universal Robots’ GTC booth will showcase a state-of-the-art robotic foundation model from Generalist AI, a UR preferred model partner. Leveraging this model, two UR robots will complete a complex smartphone packaging task, previously impossible without recent advances in the field of Physical AI.
AI robotics training is often hindered by fragmented hardware and low-fidelity data capture. Much of today’s training data is collected on research robots not suited for production environments, and many systems rely only on visual feedback, making delicate or contact-rich tasks difficult. “The AI Trainer directly addresses these barriers,” said Beck. “By utilizing our unique Direct Torque Control and force feedback features, we give developers direct influence over how the robot physically interacts with the world, training on the same robust hardware used in over 100,000 industrial deployments.”
The AI Trainer allows human operators to guide UR robots through tasks in a leader-follower setup while automatically capturing high-quality multimodal data for robotics AI development. Operators physically guide a “leader” robot through a task while a synchronized “follower” robot mirrors the motion in real time. During each demonstration, the system records synchronized motion, force, and visual data, producing the structured datasets required to train Vision-Language-Action (VLA).
Deploying on UR’s AI Accelerator platform, the UR AI Trainer combines UR robots with Scale AI software to enable data capture on UR robots in production and at scale creating continuous feedback that drives ongoing optimization of physical AI systems.
With GTC as the official launch pad, attendees will be able to experience the system first-hand at UR’s booth as they guide two UR3e ‘leader’ robots providing haptic input to control two UR7e ’follower’ robots. The setup enables visitors to perform an advanced smartphone packaging task with haptic feedback for imitation learning and VLA training, with demonstration data recorded in real time on Scale’s stack and replayable directly on the AI Trainer.
The process of capturing robot training data for AI models is further showcased through a demo that illustrates the same smartphone packaging task – just trained virtually: Built in NVIDIA Omniverse and leveraging Isaac Sim, the simulated setup allows attendees to control a virtual bi-manual UR3e system with real-time haptic feedback using two Haply Inverse3 devices as ‘leaders’, providing a physics-accurate simulation.
Universal Robots is also exploring the use of the NVIDIA Physical AI Data Factory Blueprint to automate and scale its synthetic data generation, transforming world-scale compute into a production engine for high-quality robotic training data.
Complementing the two data-capture demonstrations, Generalist’s showcase highlights how advances in data collection and AI models translate into real-world robotic performance. In the first public demonstration of Generalist’s embodied foundation models, two UR7e robots autonomously execute a complex smartphone packaging task, demonstrating dexterity, coordination, and contact-rich manipulation in a real-world environment. The demonstration shows how scaled, high-quality training data combined with frontier model architectures can enable robust physical AI systems beyond the lab.
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 18, 2026 | Education, Robots, Workforce
Here’s a free learning event in Reno concerning the value of robotics for expanding your manufacturing productivity.
As Northern Nevada’s manufacturing sector continues its rapid expansion, the region’s employers are confronting a growing challenge: a labor market that has nearly run out of slack. OnRobot will host the “Build your Automation Roadmap” event in Reno on April 9th, bringing practical automation solutions directly to the region’s manufacturing community.
The free, in-person event is designed for manufacturers in sectors such as metal fabrication, CNC machining, electronics, aerospace, food & beverage, and industrial equipment manufacturing – industries that form the backbone of the Reno manufacturing economy and are among the hardest hit by ongoing labor shortages.
Event Snapshot:
Build Your Automation Roadmap: Industrial Robots + Tooling
A hands-on event featuring live FANUC robot demonstrations, expert-led workshops, and real-world automation use cases.
April 9th, 2026, 12:00pm–4:00pm PT
Grand Sierra Resort, 2500 East 2nd St, Reno, NV
Northern Nevada’s manufacturing sector has grown faster than its available workforce can keep pace with unemployment rates at just 4.0%, near the lowest levels on record – leaving manufacturers with a shrinking pool of available workers even as industrial demand continues to grow.
A recent report from the University of Nevada, Reno, commissioned by the Nevada Office of Workforce Innovation, identified workforce gaps across every regional economic development authority in the state, with fabricated metal manufacturing, precision machining, and electronics among the most acutely affected sectors in the Reno area.
“Northern Nevada has become one of the most dynamic manufacturing regions in the country, but that growth is creating real pressure on employers who simply can’t hire fast enough to keep up,” said Kristian Hulgard, General Manager, Americas, at OnRobot. “Automation isn’t a future consideration for manufacturers here, it’s an immediate operational need. This event is about giving the region’s manufacturers a clear, practical path forward.”
At the event, attendees will see live demonstrations of FANUC robots equipped with OnRobot end-of-arm tooling for common applications such as machine tending, material handling, assembly, packaging, and quality inspection. Automation experts, that help manufacturers move from curiosity to confident implementation, will be on hand to share real-world experience in robotics, tooling, and integration.
Featured Speakers and Sessions:
Kristian Hulgard, General Manager, Americas, OnRobot – Opening keynote on macrotrends affecting U.S. automation growth, why adoption is accelerating across manufacturing, and what it means for Nevada operations.
Brian La Plante, District Manager, FANUC America – Live demonstrations of FANUC robots, identifying the practical approach to the automation journey.
Marc Magarin, President and Co-Founder, Nevatio Engineering – Learn how the right components, sourcing strategy, and distribution support keep automation projects on track.
Registration incl. lunch is free, but space is limited.
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