Case Study
Shanghai Disney Resort
World-class family resort destination prevents scenic water treatment system downtime with the STRATUS® ftServer® platform
Shanghai Disney Resort, located in Pudong New District, Shanghai, is the first Disney park resort in Mainland China and the second in Greater China. The resort is home to the Shanghai Disneyland theme park, which features six lands two themed hotels, the Disneytown shopping, dining and entertainment district, a Broadway-style theatre, Wishing Star Park and other outdoor recreation areas. Shanghai Disney Resort, which opened in June 2016 and cost nearly $5.5 billion to construct, is three times larger than Disney’s parks in Hong Kong and Tokyo. The theme park resort is expected to attract more than 25 million visitors a year.
The challenge
The Shanghai Disney Resort features man made lakes and public green spaces that span the 963-acre property and provide a lush and inviting environment for visitors. A project of this size and scope requires a comprehensive water circulation and irrigation system, along with an integrated water treatment plant, to maintain established water quality standards.
Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd. designed and constructed a comprehensive engineering infrastructure with the capacity to treat up to 24,000 m3/d of water. The system enables continuous circular processing of central lake water, which maintains total phosphorous below 0.01-0.02mg/L, and ammonia nitrogen at no more than 0.05mg/L—measurements that exceed national quality standards for scenic surface water. The complex infrastructure relies on an automated software system—comprising management, monitoring, data, and field control layers—to track, control and analyze all system equipment and data and drive seamless, high-performance production and operation.
Lake and irrigation water throughout the park is tested on a regular basis to ensure it meets the resort’s quality standards. If the automated water treatment system experiences even brief unscheduled downtime, the water could quickly become contaminated and fail to meet established quality standards. In order to mitigate this potential risk, Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd. needed a way to keep the resort’s scenic water treatment system up and running all the time.
The solution
To meet this continuous availability requirement, Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd. set out to evaluate downtime prevention solutions. Shanghai Hi-Tech Control System Co., Ltd. (HITE), a leading manufacturer and system integration service provider, recommended the fault-tolerant Stratus® ftServer® platform. Although HITE faced competition from other availability solution providers, the project designer ultimately selected ftServer based on its proven reliability, ease of maintenance, and demonstrated success in preventing downtime of other water treatment systems across the globe.
On behalf of Shanghai Disney Resort, Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd. purchased four ftServer 6410 series platforms to build the core architecture of the water treatment project’s control room. ftServer proactively prevents downtime and data loss before it occurs to deliver 99.9999% availability without impacting system performance.
The ftServer solution’s always-on capabilities are achieved with advanced lockstep technology and real-time management and monitoring. Mirrored hardware components process the same instructions in “lockstep”—at the same exact time. In the event of a component malfunction, the mirrored component continues processing without any system interruption. An Automated Uptime Software Layer™ identifies, manages and takes corrective action on failed components before they affect operations by monitoring more than 500 system components. In addition, ftServer enables control room IT staff to monitor the water treatment system infrastructure in a single dashboard and automatically restart applications in the event of an unrecoverable error to avoid any downtime or loss of in-flight data.
“Shanghai Disney Resort, which we jointly own, manage and operate with The Walt Disney Company, strives to offer a world-class experience of fantasy, imagination, creativity and adventure. Our water circulation, treatment, and irrigation system enables us to provide a lush and welcoming park environment that exceeds national standards for surface water quality. We can count on the Stratus ftServer solution to eliminate single points of technical failure so this critical system runs continuously— without unscheduled interruptions—for smooth, reliable operations.”
Mr. Pang
Chief Engineer
Shanghai Disney
The results
Shanghai Disney Resort’s water treatment project was launched 18 months before the park opened to visitors in order to allow adequate time for system testing and optimization. Since the project went live, ftServer has enabled always-on water circulation and treatment as well as stable, continuous transmission and storage of field data—with zero unplanned downtime. This continuous system availability has allowed the resort to consistently meet quality standards for second-class surface water throughout the property.
In addition, the ftServer platform has been easy and cost-effective to maintain with no need for failover scripting, repeated test procedures or any extra effort to make applications cluster-aware. Hot-swappable replacement units (CRUs) are simple to replace, without requiring user intervention or special tools, while the platform and applications continue to run seamlessly. Because ftServer is designed to deliver always-on operation and long-term value, Shanghai Shendi Group Co. Ltd. expects to achieve low total cost of ownership and high return on investment.
