Use Configurator to Set Up an OPC UA Server

When your Plant SCADA installation is complete, a dialog will appear asking if you would like to launch Configurator.

To set up an OPC UA Server, open Configurator and adjust the following settings on the OPC UA Sever page under Plant SCADA.

Note: The settings on this page will not encrypt communication with Plant SCADA runtime. You need to a connect the OPC UA server to a System Management Server and have encryption enabled to allow communication with a runtime system. See Enable Encryption.

Address Configuration

• Enter the Port Number that you want to use for the OPC UA server. The value you enter will be reflected in the URL.

• The URL field shows the address that you need to use to connect an OPC UA client to the OPC UA server. You cannot edit this field. It defaults to:

  opc.tcp://<computer name>:48031/plantscada.

  The OPC UA server does not support OPC UA’s discovery feature, so you need to manually enter this URL into a client application to connect to an OPC UA server.

Encryption

Select Enable encrypted communications to protect the connection between the OPC UA server and any connected clients. This will set the security policy to Basic256Sha256 and the security mode to SignAndEncrypt.

For information on how to use certificates to enable encrypted communications between a Plant SCADA OPC UA server and an OPC UA client, see Configure Client Certificates for an OPC UA Server.

Note: It is recommended that you enable encryption to help secure the OPC UA server.

Authentication

Select Allow anonymous connections if you want to allow users to connect anonymously to the OPC UA Server.

If this option is not selected, a user will only be able to access the server if they are part of a Windows group that is associated with one of the Security Roles defined in your project. Plant SCADA users are not supported.

Note: It is recommended that you disable anonymous access to facilitate user-based security for the OPCUA server. Also, tag writes from an OPC UA client application are not supported if anonymous access is enabled.

Browsing

Many OPC UA clients will only allow writes to occur on the leaf nodes in the OPC UA browse result. For OPC UA clients that support this functionality, you will need to select Disable properties and extensions.