Set up a connection

You can use the AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector to set up connections between AVEVA Plant SCADA and either AVEVA Insight or AVEVA Historian.

To launch Connector

• From the Start menu, select AVEVA, then select AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector to launch Connector.

The Settings page shows four tabs: Plant SCADA, Destination, Directory, and Request. Use these to specify the originating CtAPI server, the destination for your data (either Insight or Historian), and other option settings.

To specify the originating CtAPI server

1. Select the Plant SCADA tab and provide the following connection details:

   • Primary CtAPI Server - The name or IP address of the computer running the CtAPI Server. CtAPI Server is an AVEVA Plant SCADA Display Client with [CtAPI]Remote = 1 in citect.ini and has the server password configured.

     Note: To use secure communication, you must provide the computer name instead of the IP address.

   • Standby CtAPI Server - An alternate or redundant data path to retrieve historical data.

   • Authentication - Select whether the user accounts used for authentication are SCADA Users, or Windows Users. The default selection is Windows Users.

   • User name and Password - These are configured in AVEVA Plant SCADA. This account should have read privileges for alarm, trend, and SPC tags.

   • Enable Alarm Event Acquisition - Select this option to publish the alarm events from AVEVA Plant SCADA to AVEVA Historian or AVEVA Insight.

     Note: Data will not be forwarded to AVEVA Historian or AVEVA Insight if the following occurs:
     - The area or privilege of any alarm, trend, or SPC tag that is being logged using Connector is changed to a privilege or area that the CtAPI user is not allowed to access.
     - You change the privileges or view areas of the role of the CtAPI user.

Now, you can specify and connect to a destination (described below).

To connect to AVEVA Insight as the destination

2. Select the Destination tab.

3. Select Insight (Cloud).

   AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector attempts to retrieve your AVEVA Plant SCADA license.

4. If the connector is unable to connect to the Plant SCADA system to retrieve a license, a message displays troubleshooting suggestions. Verify the connection information on the Plant SCADA tab, then try again.

   

5. If the connector is able to connect to the Plant SCADA system but cannot retrieve a license, the following dialog displays.

   

   Verify your AVEVA Plant SCADA system is up to date and licensed, then try again.

6. When a license is retrieved successfully, the Register button displays.

   

   Click Register to launch AVEVA Insight Publisher.

7. Follow the on-screen prompts in Publisher.

8. In AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector, click Save.

9. Ensure that Connector has started. (For more information, see Run AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector.)

To connect to a destination AVEVA Historian server

10. Select the Destination tab.

11. Select Historian (On Premises).

12. Provide these details:

    • Host - Host name or IP address for AVEVA Historian.

      Note: To use secure communication, you must provide the host name instead of the IP address.

    • User name and Password - These are configured in AVEVA Historian. This account must have write permission for tags.

      For the trace, log, and acquisition information, see the log viewer in the Operations Control Management Console. You'll find it in the Start menu under AVEVA.

      Optionally, click Show advanced settings to review defaults or adjust as needed:

    • Connection mode - Choose whether the connection Requires a trusted certificate, or if an untrusted certificate is allowed.

      Note: Untrusted certificates should only be used for testing, and should never be used in a production environment.

    • Port - The TCP port of the Historian Client Access Point. Use port 32565 for trusted connections, or 32568 for untrusted connections.

      Default: 32565 (trusted)

    • Enable compression - Select this option to compress data packets being sent from the connector to the Historian Server.

      Default: Disabled

    • Reconnect as soon as possible and do not mark disconnects - Specifies how trends appear during communication disconnects between Plant SCADA Connector and Historian. It does not affect how trends of history data appear after communications have been restored. If selected, no gap will appear in client-side trends for the disconnect interval. While disconnected, the interval is filled in with the last-received value before the disconnect. If disabled, a gap will appear in client-side trends for the disconnect interval. NULL values are injected on disconnect to create the gap. In both cases, after reconnect, the interval will be filled in with store-and-forward data.

      Default: Disabled

    • Throttling network bandwidth - Maximum network bandwidth, in kbps, between Connector and the Historian server. This can be set to a minimum of 10 Kbps, and up to a maximum of 100,000 Kbps.

      Note: This value is approximate. The actual bandwidth may be slightly higher at times.

      Default: Unlimited

    • Wait to send incomplete packets - Amount of time, in milliseconds, that a data packet is held open for additional values to be written by Connector before the packet is sent to the Historian server. This can be set to a minimum of 50 milliseconds, and up to a maximum of 30 seconds.
      Default: 1 second

    • Pre-processing buffer size - Size of data buffer, in MB, that Connector can use for storing data before it is sent to the Historian server. This can be set to a minimum of 0 MB, and up to a maximum of 65,535 MB. For high throughput cases, use 512 MB.
      Default: 8 MB

    • Store forward threshold - Amount of disk space, in MB, that should be available on the disk before the connector stops accepting new values. This can be set to a minimum of 0 MB, and up to a maximum of 2,147,483,647 MB.
      Default: 125 MB

    • Store forward minimum duration - Amount of time, in seconds, that Connector should remain in Store and Forward mode before it attempts to re-connect to the Historian server. This can be set to a minimum of 0 seconds, and up to a maximum of 3,600 seconds.
      Default: 30 seconds

13. Click Save.

    When you select Historian as your destination and click Save, AVEVA Historian Plant SCADA Connector immediately begins making the connection between the AVEVA Plant SCADA server and the AVEVA Historian server.

To define optional Connector settings

14. Select the Directory tab to configure log and data folders, and disk-space consumption:

    • Log/Folder path - Indicates the location where log files are saved. For example: tracelog.dat. This path cannot be changed.

    • Local Data (buffer)/Folder path - Indicates the location where the data cache is stored. This path cannot be changed.

    • Pause when free space below - If the disk space available on the drive (defined for the data cache) falls below this threshold (default is 10%), the connector will pause read requests. This will stop the connector from consuming more disk space. Once space becomes available normal data collection resumes automatically.

15. Select the Request tab and set the data acquisition parameters required for requesting trend data and alarm events from AVEVA Plant SCADA:

    • Update Trend interval - Determines how often the Connector Service will perform read/write trend requests. The default is 10 minutes.

    • Update Event interval - Determines how often the Connector Service will perform read/write alarm event requests. The default is 10 minutes.

      Note: If you set the Update Event interval to 0, alarm events are read from AVEVA Plant SCADA and immediately written to AVEVA Historian without any delay.

    • Update Variable Tag interval - Determines how often the Connector Service will perform digital or/and string variable tag requests. The default is 10 seconds.

      Note: If you set the Variable Tag interval to 0, the Variable Tag will be polled every second.

    • Selected cluster(s) - Enter the cluster or cluster names to be included during the data migration process. (Default – <empty> includes clusters available). If specifying multiple clusters, separate cluster name using a comma.

16. Click Save.

17. Stop and restart the service to apply any updated settings. The service can be restarted by either stopping and then starting the service, or selecting restart.