Boss/Minion Clustering — Scalable PLC Architecture

The Boss/Minion architecture scales from a single instance to thousands of coordinated controllers. This video demonstrates view switching across a clustered deployment.

The Architecture

• Boss — the central coordinator: configuration, monitoring, and the unified web interface
• Minions — individual runtime instances executing control logic independently

The Boss monitors and manages every Minion from one interface, switching views between instances in real time. It has been exercised at 10,000+ concurrent PLC instances and over 620,000 scans per second across 31 Minion nodes.

Use Cases

• Data centre management — one PLC per rack or zone, coordinated centrally
• Water treatment — distributed control across pump stations and treatment stages
• Large manufacturing — independent machine controllers reporting to a central system
• Simulation — spinning up hundreds of virtual PLCs for testing