Create an alarm record mapping file

You must map the alarm records of a hot backup pair whenever the primary and backup alarm providers are running different applications. Alarm record mapping establishes a correspondence between dissimilar alarm records of the primary and backup providers. For example, you can map alarm records based upon their assigned InTouch tag names. Although their names may be different, the alarm records are logically consistent between the two provider alarm repositories.

Note: Creating an alarm record mapping file is unnecessary if both the primary and backup providers are running the same application. If no mapping file is provided, the Distributed Alarm system assumes the primary and the backup providers are running the same applications with the same alarm records.

Mapping enables alarm acknowledgements to be synchronized between providers running different applications. When the Distributed Alarm system acknowledges an alarm on a provider, it also knows which alarm to acknowledge on the other provider.

The following figure shows alarm record mapping between the two providers of a hot backup pair. In this example, the A and B alarm records of the primary provider are mapped to the corresponding alarm records of the backup provider, MA and MB.

The Hot Backup Manager imports the alarm record map from a comma separated values (CSV) file that you create with Microsoft Excel or a text editor like Notepad. The mapping file includes an ordered list of alarm record fields that associate the corresponding alarm records of the primary and backup providers.

You must specify tag alarm record fields as the headers of the mapping file. The order of the headers within the file must match the alarm record fields shown from the Select Key Fields dialog box. The figure below shows the column headers of an Excel file that match the order of alarm record fields of the Select Key Fields dialog box.

You can create a mapping file that only includes the selected headers of alarm field records used to generate mapping keys. The figure below shows an Excel file that includes only the Name, Class, and Type headers. When you add headers, their order must always match the order of alarm record fields of the Select Key Fields dialog box.

Specify the alarm field records of the primary provider in the left set of columns. Likewise, specify the same records of the backup provider in the right set of columns.

Value, Limit, and Comment columns:

• The "Value" and "Limit" column values can be anything other than Null, when the "Class" or "Type" values for that particular record in that particular node are not known.

• The "Value" and "Limit" column values can accept only 1234567890.-+eE characters when the Class value for that particular record in that particular node is known as Value, Dev or ROC.

• The "Value" and "Limit" column values can accept only 1234567890.-+eE characters when the Type value for that particular record in that particular node is known as LOLO, LO, HI, HIHI, MinDev, MajDev or ROC.

• The "Value" and "Limit" column values can be anything other than Null, when any one of the "Class" or "Type" values for that particular record in that particular node is known as DSC.

• The Comment column values have no limitations.

• All records of the mapping file should be unique. The Hot Backup Manager skips any duplicate records during the import process. You can see details after the import process is completed.

You can combine the field values of alarm records - such as Group, name, and Priority - to generate a "composite mapping key" that uniquely identifies alarm records.

An InTouch Alarm Provider equates the "Name" field to the name of the tag that generated the alarm. Therefore, when given hot backup pair, a mapping key can be generated using the combination of the alarm group name and the tag name.

For example:

If a provider has a name field and comment field together as a unique field then the mapping key can be a combination of name and comment.

This could be true for any other field combination for a third provider.