Network Management Console (NMC) basics

This chapter provides information on your Network Management Console (NMC).

The NMC is a member of the AVEVA Enterprise SCADA product. The NMC is a configuration and monitoring tool that allows Administrators to view their system’s configuration properties and monitor the state of their AVEVA Enterprise SCADA system.

An AVEVA Enterprise SCADA Solution is designed to run as a collection of Windows Services. Characteristics of this software on the Microsoft (MS) Windows platform are as follows:

• It can run regardless of whether or not an Administrator is logged on to the system.

• It can be configured to start immediately when the computer reboots.

• It does not require any Administrator interaction.

• It can be considered dependent on other Windows Services. In this configuration the parent is started before the child services are.

• It can map to more than one process.

For applications that are not user interface programs, a Windows Service is the mechanism of choice on any Windows OS Platform.

The AVEVA Enterprise SCADA service maps directly to a Windows Service (one-to-one correlation), with some additional configuration defined within the Configuration Datastore (the Active Directory (AD) on a project).

For the AVEVA Enterprise SCADA services, the infrastructure delivers the following additional benefits:

• Provides support within the NMC (Administrator User Interface) for such events as startups and shutdowns.

• Monitors processes that are members of the service.

• Provides support for Redundancy (Arbitration).

It is expected that, as new independent applications are developed, they will become new services.

In addition, the NMC acts as an interface to the AD.

Before using the NMC, read this manual to become familiar with the NMC's basic features. The NMC is the primary tool for configuration and administration of the AVEVA Enterprise SCADA system. Its monitoring capabilities also make it an excellent tool for quick detection of problems in the system.

The NMC provides three core pieces of functionality.

Configuration

The NMC is used to configure AVEVA Enterprise SCADA computer properties. This includes system definitions and arbitration, as well as properties associated with a variety of services.

Monitoring

The NMC takes advantage of middleware technology to monitor the health of the system. You can gauge the system’s health by observing the states of any computer’s system icons. These icons indicate the various states of the system; for example, green indicates good health, yellow indicates a warning, and red indicates failure. Monitors include processes and any WMI compatible component. There are over 500 WMI-compatible components available within the Windows operating system including printers, CPU temperatures, drive space, swap space, and CPU load. WMI-compatible components can also include third-party components like Network Interface Controller (NIC) cards.